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Please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And Mr. Rub, would you please recite the mission statement? Sure. Our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future. Okay. Uh we've got a couple of public comments that were emailed in. Uh the first one is from William Morgan. Um and the topic is the TTRO out of Sangaman County. Hello all. Uh, one of the most important facets of the law is the idea that it should be predictable and not prone to wild shifts. We are a society built upon laws and not upon men. This is why the doctrine of starry decisis exists. It's part of why judges look to precedent not just to ensure that we are learning from what came before us, but in an attempt to ensure that there are no sudden shifts in the law.

and then i came back for a brief all-star reunion year in 2016. um this was my first school and i had taught it several since but i always think of tahunto as my only school and i've told others that that have not been here which i don't have a problem with um so i feel like it's my home still we did as jay said we started a girls mentoring program on november 13th with a small group of middle school girls in clinton and have had tremendous success um it's just it's just been wonderful and amazing and encouraging and so i am hoping that we could do the same here at hondo for the middle school girls here um that is my hope and it would fall under the same umbrella of real mentors and it would follow the same basic model as the boys program that is already established here at tahanto so thanks for listening thank you very much next for public health we have jessica david um so dear western berlin school committee and concerned residents watching online um i promise tonight in regards to the letter they've written to that scene i first want to thank dr susan henry for her service she was always respectful and her position to represent her town and careful to analyze david to help her make those decisions it's very sad that we lost such an intelligent individual due to bullying within the community so like i said it comes in regards to the letter being sent and written to desi i'm concerned that the individual writing the letter will not represent the district with respect and a civil tone of note anyone including a newspaper reporter can request her resignation letter as is part of the public record along with many other communications to the committee so dating back to march 9th 2021 meeting there's been swearing disrespect to the teachers on their remote learning efforts and to mr zhang himself and also blatant disregard for current data in favor of personal opinion holding a seat on the school committee means representing the towns not your individual views reviewing the data and discussing her the open meeting law and then with respect coming to a collective agreement and then voting the school committee meetings have often occurred on zoom the past two years due to coven and it might have given the illusion that you as a committee were operating in a vacuum i would like to point out that although only 15 or so people attended the meeting last week over 200 people were upon zoom watching the meeting some parents were prevented like open infections from attending in person i am hopeful that a survey will be sent out soon from the superintendent that will allow parents to voice their opinions unmasked so that when the committee can review the data and not solely based on a few parents opinions my own included thankfully states surrounding us are viewing the data and the downward trends of cobin and ending mass mandates on an appropriate schedule connecticut february 28th new jersey march 7th delaware in oregon march 31st i trust jesse also to follow the ctc guidance of masking up indoors in over 50 phobic cases per hundred thousand residents or positivity rate of at least eight percent as of february third last thursday only five days ago 99.9 percent of the country did not meet the for this requirement to be removed so thankfully the last week has shown the continued decline in the cases something that was not guaranteed for the sub-daring of omicron threatening to stall the declining cases i hope that jesse will reinstate the mass mandate if we reach those benchmarks again i encourage parents and the school committee to continue discussions with respect and with an effort to remain civil as laura said last meeting in the end we're all neighbors and if i might add our children friends finally i end with a district-wide request that many people run this november for elections and even more show up to vote neglecting this voting duty has led to certain books being banned in other states and it is our duty to come respectfully and departing because i have patients still at the clinic jessica negley thank you we are going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is the consensus is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented any discussion okay all in favor all right as well closed motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes we are going to move on to the reorganization of the berlin boylston regional school committee um at this time i would like to entertain a motion to elect a new chair i'll make a motion to elect lori hart as our chair all in favor aye uh opposed i'm an eye as well the motion to elect lori heart does share his asses thank you motion to elect megan grill as vice chair passes congratulations okay um i would like to entertain a motion to appoint a member to replace susan on the policy subcommittee secretary i spoke to christie about that are you still retaining it yeah i just wouldn't enjoy it thank you yes we thank you for pointing that out i appreciate it um so do we have this would someone like to appoint someone to the policy subcommittee um i would like to entertain a motion to appoint a member to replace susan on the negotiation committee i'll make a motion to um have glory hart be part of the negotiations [Music] negotiation committee passes [Music] district improvement plan just to talk about timeline we talked a little bit about this earlier so we'll stop collecting data and watch and we will actually put together a new transition improvement plan because it will run from 2023 to 2025 we'll put that together in the summer for a vote by this committee in most likely september there was some discussion of whether there was going to be a vote in december um by whoever the next committee is going to be but after we discussed it with the leadership team we we just thought we would be presidents to have this committee going on and you've done most of the work athletic fees typically once a year the committee votes on whether to change athletic fees usually the voters we're going to need preschoolers after some discussions we decided that this would not be a good year to increase athletic peace so we decided not to bring it up for a vote and so they would remain the same the athletic features remain safe for 22 to 23 school years and finally the enrollment report i think you have that so let me just try to go over this as quickly as i can um we usually do this once a year i didn't do it last year because gymnastics didn't really provide any accurate data but the nasdaq is a group that provides most of the data we use and what they use for their forecasting and the criteria you see their very great migration uh wholesale age group trends new construction past and north history health trends economic trend and school choice and they they don't always apply to us but earth rate certainly does migration typically the state does not have a lot of renters but with more rentals being built that will have an impact certainly home sales age group trends families with children between one and four years to be a little more mobile once once this child gets older than that they tend to try to find a home and settle down uh baby moments we do have something in the community they have to dial so they move new construction we have quite a bit of that going on past enrollment history the projection view is a five-year ruling average um certainly health trends again have an impact with covert and also the opioid epidemic has had a major impact on lot of young kids economic trends inflation um you know we have families who have moved out of suburbs because of prices of gas and rent move closer to the not city big of an issue with us but certainly school choices nasdaq uses a technique called cohort survival technique and it takes the number of students that will historically survive one the great and they use those percentages to come up with a a ratio which they then apply to the the next grades up it has a it has about a 99 accuracy per year for the first five years and and so for a five-year forecast the uh is accurate between 95 and 99 after that it just goes off the cliff so once you start looking out like past like 10 years and passed you can have up to a 30 to a 40 percent error so that's why we don't even though they give us they look out that far we typically don't go that far this technique uh is reliable but it's less reliable under two conditions one when a district has a thousand or less students and the other is when there's a lot of building going on we have both of those in our community uh which makes forecasting enrollment uh much more difficult so i'll start going through the tiles don't go through all the numbers you have to listen i will say if you look at uh berlin memorial um the the enrollment numbers have stayed fairly stable and part of that is because they have whatever mass they plan to program they've been able to [Music] not count us because they don't have official caps on building permits but the building in berlin has been much lower than it has been in boylston also if you look at the childhood birth rate and growth it's been stable it's gone up about one uh one birth per year and which is so the average the rolling arrows for birth and uh merlin over 24 it has gone up by one to 25 so it's not tremendous but it's it's certainly increasing and it will increase the wall with increased building uh the next piece of data i have there is uh the number of children born versus the k enrollment you see if you look at the graph it's a little easier to see these are usually just worksheets i use for myself and it's easy to explain them if you look at if you look at the number of children born which is the blue line and then decay enrollment which is the gray line and then what i did is i just put trend lines in there so you can see that the they're almost parallel so the number of children born and the number of children that then the 10k five years later is very similar so that's been um so that's been pretty constant in that time the thing that may change some of that is the uh the next set of data i show which is building permits it's been pretty low but in 2021 they it's so in 2015 seven permits 2019 11th period in 2021 48 now 34 of those have been 55 and older but you have to remember that i think it's one in five one in six grandparents take care of their children now so even though it's a 55 and older community there's still a possibility that we get children a development like that um 14 of those permits are single families and um 12 of those this is a 12 unit development going in right next to berlin memorial so one of those permits one of the 48 is for one of the houses that's going in there but they're all you know they're all big houses so you know you don't know you don't know it could you could get no children out of there which is unlikely you could get 25 and so the other 11 terms just for that single family development will most likely come in 2022 and that will affect by the time someone pulls a permit and someone occupies alice in roughly one to three years and if they have children when they you know when they get there it's basically five years so um we'll see how that goes fortunately uh one of the things we have in favor in berlin is the size of the school currently the average size of the classroom is around 14 students per class and that's fairly low so you we could have we could have up to you know 18 in the class it would still be it'd still be comfortable um it's you know it's not always what you want but there's some there's stuff some room to grow there but there isn't room for there is more than two classrooms per grade they just don't have the space so when it gets to that point which i don't see in the very near future um you know there's going to be you know it will have to be a different kind of conversation this is very long time yeah [Music] river bridge which is the uh problem complex that's that's completed and so far we have i believe four students out of that which originally they forecasted 29 then they forecasted zero and so four is uh as far as what we got so far and i think it's fully occupied besides the numbers any questions about merlin okay move out to boylston uh boyle since a little bit different but boylston has had um lots of building even even before i arrived here i remember you know it was an interesting thing when i my first entity was at pds and it was in the there's been a library in the media center and so on and i got there early to drive around the town and um i remember someone saying that the population was going down you know and i just driven up seaworldly and i wanted the job so i didn't say lord you know be driven up later on and but there's a lot of building going on there and it continues to be a lot of building in that area so if you look at the projections the projections and these are these are october 1 numbers for the roman nbs if you look at the projection versus the actual so that both october 1 reports you can see that the actual numbers um are always greater than the projections of um so that school is increasing at a much higher rate than berlin memorial if you look at the number of children born you can see that that's increasing too and in fact i didn't go i stopped at 2017 but if you go out to this year the the rolling ten year average so has been 35 this is the first year that the average is above 40.

um but will at least help you identify what classes fall into humanities and what fall into stem in that stem category you'll have three credits in math three credits in science two credits in business or uh career and technical education and a half credit of that needs to be in personal finance and then one stem elective most students especially in the area of math will very easily meet that math requirement within their first few years of high school because you can transfer some of your middle school math credit to the high school the that written out in the statute is also in the program of studies the grad requirements but some students will come here already completing algebra 1 so they'll get that credit and they'll start in geometry here a full credit in pe and a full credit in health a full credit in world language and again that can be earned at the middle school level math and world language are the two subject areas where we can transfer some credit from middle school because it's parallel to the high school class the mastery-based performance assessment is one credit which dr reid will talk more about in a bit and then there are three other credits that can be in any subject area of your choosing what you're most interested in for a total of 25 credits and all students are scheduled for at least six and a half credits every year so as long as you do the minimum six and a half pass all your courses you'll actually leave here with more credits than you need for graduation according to the state you go to the next one okay so that's what i was just saying about the six and a half credits what is important to remember about credits is that is awarded on if you pass the course and then also that you're in the course enough that you're attending regularly so credit can be taken away if you fail a course or if you don't go to that class enough to really earn the credit for being in that class even if your grade was in passing range um it does specify there that if a student does not pass a course they'll have an opportunity to make up that credit if they have above a 50 that could be done in summer school um if if not you may have to retake the course again at cheshire high school so it's very important from the beginning that you're taking your credit seriously but as uh dr gad was saying we have lots of supports that are going to be in place for you to make sure you can meet those goals so i think that goes to dr reed now right no who's doing thank labs thank you soon you pop up the supports oh these are the okay those are the some of the specific that's okay the specific academics that you will you'll be taking pretty much your freshman year when you walk through the door you'll have it obviously in english modern world history science depends on what you did at dot and what your teacher recommendation is the same with math some students take earth science some students take biology some students take algebra 1 some take geometry some take algebra 2.

so more updates for us um let's see again it's all pretty straightforward the gist of this update is that it wasn't uh expressly identifying birth to three qualified personnel now obviously in the cheshire public schools we hold those people in great reverence we're the only birth to three program housed in a school system in connecticut and so these are our people making these recommendations at ppt's uh they're more than qualified to make those recommendations and so where where you see these policies updated it's to expressly indicate that you know we have to give them a voice at the table for uh ppt's you know the individualized education plan meetings that we have so you know you'll see here in the gray it's specifically calling out birth to three [Music] the other item is something that you know you guys are familiar with the transition component shifted from 16 years of age to 14 years of age the other thing that's not necessarily i don't think specifically called out here though it goes to age 22 that was a change in the law so basically when we have an individualized education plan meeting for a 14 year old student we invite them to the ppt we ask about their interests in you know high school to post-graduate educational programming or options you know like you said earlier tim it could be trades it could be the military it could be a variety of different things and we start that planning process where it used to be 16 is now 14.

um you'll i'm sorry page 9. on page 12 you'll see um you you've heard us talk about um funding our schools on an equal basis and giving principals um a little more in the of the decision making process you'll see exactly if remember it's 65 75 85 but you'll see those dollar amounts the projected enrollment and what the allocation is you can look at a particular school and and see how much they're getting for those kind of things other things i mentioned the state revenue is all there the educational cost sharing and so on but also if you look this year we have a page we always put on state and federal grants where we show each grant how much we're getting this year how much we expect next year i think that's important to look at this year because uh you'll begin to see the coronavirus relief funds uh running out next year is the first of three years when they gradually disappear it's been called a cliff but what you'll see there is the cares act which we have this year for 795 000 that's gone that ends in june so that that's good to look at but you'll also see on that same page our alliance grant which is going up again this year it's 17 million next year it's gone to 19.4 million so you'll see it right there too so those are the the highlights of the book and like i said you'll you'll see more about some of these really important things coming up thank you all right did you john i'm sorry you have these two more slides at budget driving sure yeah and these were from our earlier from last week and i think i mentioned some of those but salaries and wages of course that's always always the biggest driver and along with health insurance that's uh two-thirds of our budget at least and if you looked at the total increase uh that represents half of the increase that we're asking for and that's that's pretty typical uh year in and year out um that's what drives a school budget and um as as you all know it's it's largely your teacher contract and um what that settles for and and what that pays that is pretty much what drives your budget uh transportation special ed you'll you'll hear some specifics there those are contracts uh for the most part whether it's the contract with sta or bus company that has a couple more years to go that's calling for a four percent price increase um special education tuitions those of course come out of the pupil placement process and the ieps here's the numbers are right up there you see those that first column that general fund increase uh that's adds to our total and if if this would be my point if it's 9.2 percent the first two items are 4.7 when you take them together so that's why i say it's half and then as you look down the chart the literacy the enrollment um and and the afters uh there's another uh another third of the increase right there so that's that's why we've chosen um what we'd like to dive deeper on uh tonight and you can see uh displayed clearly there um what we're looking for in local funds after we apply some of the uh reserves and the grants the finance committee itself uh had a good look at what the actual reserves are i think it was their september meeting um they're they're specified there's there's a half a dozen of them but there's one that's specified for health insurance so we'll we'd like to apply that to our health insurance budget line there's another one for special ed i think there's one for technology so we're going to try and line those up right with uh the the line the items right now there's about 10 million dollars in reserves on the city balance sheet this certainly wouldn't draw them all down we think a gradual um release is is the best instead of all at once or uh over more time than that so you see it right there and i think is there a mic is there another slide for me there okay this is um i think it'd be karen and perhaps kim thank you thanks john um i believe cara cara is up next time for casamaro uh carawanzer you just did advance the slides i think it's me i think it's kelly yeah so i just want to take a minute cara will go next um just to talk a little bit about the special education and enrollment growth what i did here is projected the special education numbers from 2016 until our last account and remember these numbers are based on our october first count every year um so over the last six years we have grown by 340 special education students in district and even though this graph looks like it's a gradual increase over time that's equivalent to one of our smaller elementary schools um so the special education department and program is has certainly expanded uh quite rapidly in recent years um and along with that comes some some funding challenges um so for my uh portion of the presentation i'll focus on uh two different pieces of information um one of it is the staffing that's accompanied with an increased enrollment like this and um the other is some of the higher cost of some of our out of district placements um that are encumbered when when more students are with us in district um one of the things that i also want to just highlight for the board is one of our most rapidly growing populations is the preschool over the last uh six years we've grown by about 50 students at our preschool level and we currently have 168 as of our october 1st count and those are students that are identified with special needs so we have other typical students in the program so the program runs at about 250 students but 168 of them in the beginning of the year were identified as students in need of services the preschool is unique in that students begin and enroll based on their third birthday um so the enrollment there is different than kindergarten where most students traditionally start the first day of school we enroll students throughout the entire school year so we'll typically start around 1 150 or 160 um in the last year or two and grow up to about 220 or so by june by the end of the school year um and so uh these these um enrollment growth have have caused us to have to hire staff in a number of different areas um and you'll see in later slides so i won't go over it in too much detail now but additional special education teachers as well as related services staff members i know in previous years i've spoken to the board about occupational therapists and speech and language pathologists and so we have continued need um in that area as well as school counselors or social workers um and we are also seeing um an increase in some of our social emotional needs of all students but particularly our special education students we have seen more concerning and challenging behaviors among a small population of students that have caused us to place a couple of additional students out of district and you saw in the previous slide there was a 600 000 um dollar distribution of an increase in out of district tuitions um and that is our projection for next year with a a couple of additional placements on that that will be at a cost of about 600 000 to the district go ahead dr casamaro thanks kelly um so similar to other special special populations we are continuing to see growth in our esl population our multi-language learners and so you can see from the graph that the elementary is represented in blue middle school is in orange and the high school is represented in the gray the preponderance of our esl students come come to us in the younger grades that number has kind of gently gradually increasing um along with our other grade levels as well um most recently between the 1920 and 2021 2022 school year we saw an uptick of about 436 additional students um so our numbers in this area continue to grow the good news is is in terms of staffing you know we have added quite a bit in elementary over over the last couple of years so we've stabilized somewhat in that area but as those numbers move up and the students move in um we're seeing a little bit of a of a need to increase stopping um in the in the higher grade levels um so uh in general okay that's fine thanks um and gentlemen we'll talk a little bit about where those students fall in this chart as well um so here you can see the number of sections and i want to clarify kate i know you uh jotted a question down uh regarding um this total the total student capacity and the percent capacity and i just want to clarify that um so just to back up a little bit you can see that the number of sections that are represented for k-5 are actually representing the core classroom teachers so mrs smith in grade two at a school is one of those sections when you add up all of those sections across the district that's the amount of sections that we currently have representing the the current middle the current elementary schools um the second column are the projected numbers of students and so those are the students based on the based on this year's enrollment moving forward rolling up we expect to see in those seats the total student capacity is the next column so that's how many students we can accommodate within for example in kindergarten those 47 sections um first grade for example 1056 um can fill the 48 sections that we have there and so on and so forth the percent capacity is really just the number of the the uh the number of the projected students and then what we have in terms of the the number of sections and so you can see them in kindergarten and first grade a little bit tighter when you get down to grade three it we have a little bit more room um not necessarily a lot of room but we definitely have some room to to to look at how those sections fall out the high enrollment projection uh is really based on if you remember we did a demographic study that was updated in april of 2021 and that's what the demographers predicted at the time on our high enrollment projections that we would see and you can see in kindergarten in second grade that we have already exceeded the high enrollment projection um so we have to look closely at those areas there and then of course the percentage of high uh capacity of the high is listed to the right and so just to clarify kate the um the percent capacity isn't representative of the amount of space that we have in each school per se but rather the actual seats chart you know seats of students available in a particular classroom represented by those numbers of sections it does not include special area classrooms it does not include intervention classrooms uh the classrooms that are needed for special education or esl which is very much growing uh in fact so of this um in the second column if you look at the total 5407 projected students for next year of that 2307 are esl students who will all need services um and therefore you know appropriate staff and classroom space with which to provide those services so i hope that that clarifies um across in terms of the spacing of the of the school we are we are quite full okay any questions there all right and then um one of the questions that kate also had mentioned uh was it was why don't we have that type of granular level uh data for the the secondary level um it is available and it can be done we just happen to do um the sections and the percent capacity so detailed this year um if you remember because we were trying to open up dpc we had to comb through every single classroom every single seat to see how we were going to configure uh to configure that school and also to understand what the remaining space was was left in each of those uh remaining of the of the schools of that they were coming from and so for the middle school um curtin project enrollment you could see that in sixth grade we have a total of 927 the projected was 939 7th grade 952 with a projection of 992 and then in eighth grade 976 with a projection of 952 so our total current students is 28.48 are projected for next year is 28.83 okay next next side please thank you and uh similarly we're growing at the high school um our current projected uh our current enrollment from ninth grade 1181 the projected is 9.79 and 10th grade 839 the projected is 11.78 and 11th grade is 702 with a projected of 842 and then the current 412th is 781 with a projected of 714 for a total of 3503 projected for next year rolling up is and i remember correctly our high school capacity was around building capacity was around 3370 so we are well over that that number so um that is we are definitely growing there and there are students currently still in the registration process as well coming daily thank you thank you this is the one that kim's most excited about hiring all of these new people one way or the other um cam can you talk to us about staffing [Music] sure um just to give you some idea um we currently have about a thousand um teachers on staff and um i did see there was a question in the q a i think from theresa we don't have a cap on staff hiring at the teacher or administrator level we do have some non-certified um contracts that require us to cap part-timers but we do not have that kind of restriction on these two categories of teachers and administrators so what we endeavor to do is we're doing staffing is we try to match as carefully as we can the kind of the least number of teachers that we can make fit the jigsaw puzzle it's particularly challenging at the secondary level and that's where we're going to focus tonight at the elementary level it's clear if we have to open a section of a grade level we hire a grade level teacher and we push in ancillary either content areas like art music and pe or related services at the secondary level it's a little bit trickier because we're talking about electives we're talking about graduation requirements and we're talking about schedules that are very much in flux and so we have to be a little bit more careful about how we build the puzzle so this slide speaks to staffing increases that are needed at the high school to handle increasing enrollment as well as the 25 credit mandate the graduation requirements so you can see here as we go down the list 1.2 art teachers and the reason for the fraction is that it's not a pure 1.0 that we need but we need a 1.0 plus a little bit so it might be covering a section right now what we try to do is we try to make sure that we hire in the 1.0 but we do have circumstances where you might hear us refer to overloads at the high school and what that means is we may have just one section lingering out there or we may have a persistent vacancy and so the remaining teachers in that department will assume responsibility for one of the classes of that vacancy so that's why you'll see some fractions here or you'll hear us refer to overloads at the high school so 1.2 art teachers one business teacher one health and pe teacher one world language teacher the 0.8 are the overages i was just referring to so that might not be a whole teacher in for example art it might be that we need to make the schedule work one english section one spanish section so we're cobbling together some over overage assignments and then a 1.0 science teacher and the costs um really look to where we generally hire in teachers um we are seeing fewer and fewer teachers at the ba level and more and more at the m a or master's level so you're seeing numbers that reflect that so that's a total of six ftes for that um enrollment increase coverage of sections and also to meet the sections that we need in order to be able to offer students sufficient classes so that they can meet their graduation requirements on time next side please similarly because of the rapid growth that you've or the persistent growth that you heard dr casemiro described for our english language learners we continue to see large numbers of increased staffing needs in order to be sure that all of these students for whom we have an obligation to provide this particular kind of service are going to be able to get it with a certified staff member so you see year over year the numbers of ell requests for staffing particularly at the high school and middle school levels continue to grow in order to meet those students that are coming through the system and new students that are arriving so their request is for five at the high school this year um five at the middle school level and one additional at the elementary school level who that's typically someone who will be assigned to different schools they may do they may cover two or three or even four schools with um a section in each location at the elementary level so those folks tend to be more travelers and that would be for a total of 11 ell dedicated enrollment or staffing and then um you heard kelly talk about the staffing to support special education enrollment and again she has laid out over the last couple of years plans for a gradual increase in some of the ancillary service or people services that we provide so um one additional social worker is part of that plan and 2.5 additional counselors those are part of the growth plan and also part of this commitment that we've made to sel to social emotional learning and support for students particularly important in the postcovid period that we're in now so that's part of both the gradual increase as well as meeting these other goals that we've set for ourselves with dedication to those needs one slp speech and language pathologist those are folks who have very large case loads and serve students with our provide students with services required by their ieps so that's one additional in order to help meet the growing demand for those services and then you see five special education teachers um those are spread across the district and we work pretty closely with kelly in hr to get her the the kind of special ed teacher that she needs it might be a teacher in a resource room it might be a teacher in their bas program it might be an elementary teacher so we work with her to try to make sure that we can find sufficient staffing to fill those gaps and sometimes if for example there's other services that she needs we might work with her to try to find that staffing as well so she's allocated five um new ftes and that's to cover um as we said increasing demand but caused by increasing enrollment and increasing service needs and staffing to support middle school enrollment again you can see and this is across the groups there's two art teachers one health teacher and one music teacher for a total of four and again this is to try to accommodate really growing middle school populations and making sure that those students are getting all of those particular areas in order to do that we need to push in additional staffing just to cover and make sure that we meet contractual requirements for class responsibilities and by that i mean some of these folks can teach up to 125 or 130 students so we're trying to balance caseload if you will with class size so these additional supports will be put into the middle school so summing all of that up um total staffing for the high school at six ftes total staffing for our ls at 11 total staffing for special education 9.5 and total staffing for middle school enrollment at four for a total of 30.5 new ftes at a total cost of 2.2 million dollars estimated thank you kim mike kevin may i ask you a question real quick of kim on that kim that staffing is that's to meet both enrollment expectations and the high school uh accreditation issues that we need to do with it with the new credit requirement correct that's forgets to address both of those issues yes okay thank you may i also ask a question please can you mention that the special education teachers are going to be district-wide um the social worker counselor positions are those also district-wide or um kelly i want i don't know if you want to address that i can answer that um social worker position is um due at the high school and that is driven by iep needs of students that are there um the counselor positions um as you guys know we have been trying between middle and high school to increase school counselor capacity and reduce their caseloads to support students um so we are projecting those at the secondary level so from grades 6 through 12 we will reevaluate um closer to the end of the year the actual enrollment that's in the buildings to determine the best placement to put them because we would love to give one additional to each building but we know that this is part of a multi-year plan um the high school will definitely get a portion of that staffing just due to their needs right now um and then we will also look to support the middle schools where we can thank you so bye much quick question uh in the high school numbers the 35 to 3 700.

welcome to the february 8th 2022 electronic meeting of the energy commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings we hardly remember what those are like commissioners during roll call please indicate your current location during the meeting please remain on camera just as you would during in-person meetings also mute your microphone when not speaking public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities at the beginning and end of the meeting please call one of the following toll-free numbers four 877-853-5247 or eight eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine and enter the meeting id number nine three seven six seven five one six eight one nine on your phone this information is also available on the published agenda and in the public uh notices section of the city's website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 or att channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org backslash watch ctn missy would you get us going by reading the land acknowledgement absolutely i acknowledge the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe and wind out peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807.

the energy commission had a committee that over the course of about a year in 2018 research what other cities including austin and portland have done met with our local realtors and drafted the ordinance there had been hope that this ordinance would be have been acted in 2019 there's been a series of reasons put forth as to why this hasn't been the case including the desire to enact it as a package with the commercial disclosure and the green and rental housing initiatives since the commission commercial and multi-family disclosure ordinance was enacted in october of last year something else seems to have happened although the additional conversation with realtors was supposed to have taken place last summer or before they seem to have only started this month the current draft of the ordinance is virtually the same as it was in 2018 with only minor wording and organizational changes it is now not planned to be passed in 2000 until 2023 according to the presentation to be shown tonight 1200 homes are sold in ann arbor each year uh would be evaluated in 250 homes or so would be retrofitted homes only come on the market over periods of time and each year that goes by without this ordinance being passed those homes may not get to be evaluated until sometime in the 2030s the additional co2 put into the atmosphere due to the loss of these improvements will stay in the atmosphere for at least seven generations i strongly earn the commission to pass resolution recommending that this council enact this ordinance immediately it's ready to go don't let another 1200 homes be missed thank you i think we lost missy for a second she was frozen so we're going to have to wait a second until she's able to rejoin to tell us if there's other callers here she comes john yes while we're waiting tonight um wayne mentioned a resolution is he asking us to create a resolution in support of it or has there been resolution already put forth that we're um going to be considering or should have considered so i i don't know for sure to my knowledge no resolution has been prepared i don't think so that's something we would have to talk about as a commission later in the meeting if um that's necessary desirable um et cetera so that's right thank you okay thank you mark welcome back i'm back i hate internet i apologize everyone um and thanks public speaker we have one more hand up caller ending in one three four thank you dr stultz and chair mursky this is ken garber 28 haverhill court i share mr appleyard's dismay at the herd ordinance delays the heat pump discussion got me thinking about thermal dynamics indulge me here the second law of thermodynamics states that the total disorder or entropy of the universe is constantly increasing and that someday everything will come to a complete stop but it's not total futility the law implies that any system not in equilibrium not at maximum entropy can be made to do useful work two centuries ago the french physicist savi carno imagined a heat engine that could harness the flow of heat from a hot chamber to a cold chamber it's not heat that drives the heat engine but the difference in temperature between two chambers which is converted to work that's how steam engines worked in carnos day they didn't just push a piston with hot air heat engines can never be 100 efficient because you can't convert all the heat energy to mechanical energy but just as you can use a heat difference from hot to cold to drive work the second law says you can use work to move heat from cold to hot this is the principle of a refrigerator or a heat pump they're the same thing amazingly carno's theorem shows that a heat pump can be more than 100 efficient much more a modern heat pump coefficient of performance is between two and four or two hundred percent to 400 percent more heat energy created than electrical energy expended we don't violate the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy can't be created or destroyed we're just taking the heat energy in the cold space and by adding work you move it to a hot space making it hotter the work in this case employs electricity to compress a gas which raises its temperature the refrigerator was invented in 1899 but it took a while before someone used a backwards car no heat engine to heat a living space in 1948 robert weber made a heat pump and replaced his coal furnace with it so heat pumps exploit the second law just as a system out of equilibrium can drive work through entropy we can use work to temporarily reverse the process gas furnaces on the other hand use a chemical reaction to heat air very thermodynamically inefficient you don't gain energy from burning fossil fuels you're just using the solar energy stored in ancient plant matter which we call oil gas and coal breaking their chemical bonds releases heat because fossil fuels are abundant and have a high energy density doing this is relatively cheap but it's overwhelming the earth's systems for cycling carbon that's second law too once the polar ice disappears the ice caps melt the permafrost releases all its carbon and we're finally done with fossil fuels the climate will reach a new equilibrium mission rover pack can tell you what that world will look like our task is to shift that future equilibrium to the left as far as possible it's beyond urgent so let's start by applying the second law make heat pumps universal thank you mr garber you see do we have anybody else we don't tramerski very good great so um that has a lot quicker than what it has been on many occasions last year so we are now uh pleased to be able to go to the main part of our agenda and first on the agenda is as was already mentioned um by wayne appleyard a presentation about the bryant neighborhood and its um decarbonization project along with a lot of other benefits so missy may i turn things over to you and let you introduce it absolutely well thank you all so much for the opportunity to be here today and tell you a little bit about the bryant project you are not going to have to hear me talk which is i guess a gift i'm sure for all of you instead we have madison case who is an americorps vista with community action network one of our important community engagement partners and derek miller's not with us tonight but i want to acknowledge community action network which is really our strategic uh cbo community-based organization helping to move this project forward so uh surprise john very was very generous our legislative system went down uh actually across all boards and commissions but that presented an opportunity to perhaps redo this presentation so in the attachments to the agenda you're going to see two slides one is kind of the more standard slide deck for osi we're not going to present that tonight i'm happy to answer questions about it madison is going to present this project from community action network's perspective so madison welcome to the energy commission it's a pleasure to have you and i'm going to turn it over to you now thank you so much missy the pleasure is all mine i assure you um so i did not have a virtual base job during the pandemic so bear with me on my screen sharing abilities let me pull that up for you all right does that look good for everyone awesome thank you so much well as missy said my name is madison case i'm an americorps vista for the community action network um previous to can i worked in the corporate retail industry so um i have an operations background in the food industry as well so this this work um is incredibly important to me and always has been and it's been a delight to move back into more community-based work and get to work on this project i'm going to go over a couple different things my presentation first just the basic project goal um you know why canada's involved why bryant is an important community to be recognized some of the efforts we're going through i'm going to focus on three different topics community outreach climate change and resilience public health as i might make a typo on that one and human services next steps and questions i didn't feel the need to parse out any challenges along the way as well i'll talk about those as i go through each one of the slides i don't think any challenges should be removed from the ability to move forward in any of our work either so just let me know if you have questions along the way but i did take some time at the very end so first and foremost the project goal is to create the first decarbonized existing neighborhood in our um we want to make sure that it's a replicable model throughout the rest of the area but also ensuring that we're meeting people where they're at with sustainability that means ensuring that all of our goals our aspirations and our strengths are coming from the residents themselves sustainability is something that means something different for everyone and that's something we've really seen is trying to move forward with with this project some of us like those of you here think sustainability is something that um is more maybe of an academic point of view or professional point of view but as we start to trickle down into different communities that may mean something different for everyone um and at the end of the day we want to ensure that we're using the residents and their strengths whether or not it's personal it's their community outreach abilities or just their general interest and excitement about this moving forward to garner them nonprofits like us and other government organizations like osi working together to create a healthy environment and neighborhood but on top of that first and foremost we want to ensure that we are combining both the climate change crisis social justice to create our climate justice along the way so why the bryant neighborhood um the bryant neighborhood is a frontline neighborhood which means that at first and foremost it's going to bear the forced climate consequences as we go through the climate change crisis um neighborhoods that are historically underserved or under resourced are going to be hit the hardest and you know bearing that name or don't have the resources to move forward and make the changes that might make them more sustainable so starting where it's most needed is incredibly important when it comes to this work um the a couple different demographics about the bryant neighborhood here um about 50 of our neighborhood is of color um we have 75 percent of our residents are low income the bryant neighborhood was actually the first i want to say the first affordable housing area not necessarily as um you know apartment-style living but as housing style living in ann arbor uh with about 260 homes built in the 1970s um they're 50 50 split and breath with renter occupied but we do have a very energy burdened neighborhood um and we want to ensure that while um you know we're taking that burden off of our neighborhood that we're doing in a way that can be replicated across the rest of ann arbor as well so again why can why is it important that we work with community action network when we're coming to the bryant neighborhood we have an incredibly long standing relationship with the community this um the brian community center as its own has been around since around the 1980s but it's been owned and operated by cans since the 2000s and one thing that we see is incredibly important when working with our communities is having long-standing resources there not just within just having the community center but also having staff that is there for a really long time with the amount of change that happens in some of these neighborhoods and communities we want to ensure that we are a very reliable um source of trust of resources and anything that goes along with having someone that you um no one understand in our neighborhood um here i have pictured skye who is our community center director he's been with us for over a decade at the bryant community center so you can imagine the amount of um not just access he has to the community but the amount of trust and just availability and understand and love for the community there um you know when you're there for a decade and you work with students and with kids and with families you see your families flourish and you know you have someone from kindergarten through their entire way through high school i mean there's a lot of of trusted compatibility that you have with someone there that long and i think a really great side tangent story is that that's crystal our community outreach specialist that works for community action network but skye is actually the godfather for her child so if that shows you how important our relationships were are with the community and crystal lives in the bryant neighborhood it's just it's incredibly important and we see that our three pillars of service are educational enrichment food food assistance and housing security so we do act as a human resource basket in a way for the neighborhood we help them communicate with dte we help them communicate with any other bill payments they have and not in a way to make sure that we're solving all of any solving any issues or helping them work to it we want to ensure that we are not canceling the problem out and helping them thrive you know and work on their own and stand on their own as well our food assistance programs are are through our food pantry and we're actually the largest food pantry in washington county we tend to have around 600 clients per week throughout the pandemic we allow people to come more than once per week or whenever it was needed because we saw the need was that high but even now with families just coming once per week we're still seeing around the same amount of demand which just shows you how much it's needed in the area and as far as educational enrichment goes we have our programs that are after school program summer program but it's all year round um it's a it's a year-round curriculum so they have a theme every year next year it's environmental um sustainability so we're really excited to bring a lot of the work that we're doing in this project trickle down from not only just parents and families but down to the kids um let's see going on so one of the things that we have been working on specifically are you know one of our three topics is community outreach which obviously for a project like this is going to be key not only in creating a base of that trust for you know my work in the neighborhood crystals work in the neighborhood but also just us you know getting a basis of understanding of where people are at with sustainability as well um we have um me and crystal doing mailers and monthly events um in the neighborhood we started out with door knocking though um and and you know i know all of you are familiar in some capacity with the policy world um and you know any world of community outreach but that has really been our most successful form of outreach so far because that face-to-face interaction really has created a amount of trust and understanding with us because while crystal's lived in the neighborhood for her entire life she grew up there she still doesn't know all of the residents and i know none of the residents and i want to ensure that my face uh triggers trust and understanding or at least just an interest in the program and wanting to ask questions because they they don't need to trust me right away they don't need to trust crystal but they at least we're hoping that they want to ask questions and be more interested in the program um some of the monthly events that we've been also to have been able to have face-to-face conversations with residents through are our community clean up every year we bring about three 30-yard dumpsters into the neighborhood and allow residents to come down throw if they need to away and then come to the community center afterwards for food and so then we were able to capture quite a few residents in an initial survey that we did trying to engage the demographics of the neighborhood their interest in being a part of our our surveys our you know just email lists and other parts of our just general outreach program but we're also able to get a lot of dte information from residents there as well which is going to help us gain a lot more information about their actual energy use in their homes so the community cleanup was great next year we're actually working with missy and osi to ensure that we do it in a more sustainable way so we're not only going to get our open tops but we're also going to bring in a few more um uh waste diversion friendly open tops in to ensure that we're making sure the electronics are going to the right place our um uh you know plastics whatever so on so forth and that's actually what i did in my recent ch my past job for um this with kroger so i'm really excited about that in the future uh we also did a tree planting in the fall as well and that was incredibly successful with the neighborhood it's also again a face-to-face interaction with a staff member of osi we have other volunteers in the city of ann arbor um and some of those were 82-0 ambassadors and we were excited to have those ambassadors there as well um but outside of that they're also helping us with a couple other projects along the way i'm actually an ambassador too so outside of my time at can i've been with i know snaps for that time with osi but um it's been really exciting to get to know other people that have a passion for sustainability in ann arbor but then also bring other professionals that have a very specified interest and sustainability into this project so with the rank uh the brian project we have the availability now to you know work with one of our team architects work with um people that have interest in the school systems and about you know that very type of sustainability interest that um not only was part of the tree planting but that going forward are going to be a part of a bunch of different facets of this project but specifically more in our home assessments which i'll get to later um we hosted a master gardening class at the bryant community center not just for residents but osi did their training there too so using the center really is an area for people to see as a community structure not just for the brine community but that the city sees it as a very valid space to be used in the area as well and i think that helps garner productivity not just for thinking the community center is a space for people who have need but also have an interest that's one of our challenges that we've seen going forward is that people see the community center as a very you know low income you know we don't we don't want to use this space because we don't have an income based need or you know food we're not food insecure those types of area so we're wanting to ensure people see bcc is an area that everyone is welcome and that everyone has a valid reason to go there so that was one of the pieces that we use that for and then we have an upcoming valentine's day event with small themes like love your home love your planet um that we're going to use as sustainability like and with the theme of sustainability um you know not just with our families but also introduce it with the kids and start start moving forward with the with the thematic curriculum for the year um we've also done some mailers uh my next slide is just some of those examples uh you can see me and crystal doing some door knocking over there um on the left side these are just the front pages of both of these as well so they're not in full in full form um but we did have em live come out and do an article about the area too or we were fortunate enough that m live was interested enough to do an article about our work um so they came out and took some professional pictures which have been really great for us as far as our outreach has gone because we have you know we're involved in more of an official capacity and then we can link people to um a more official sign up in an area that people can trust too because mli obviously is an incredibly trustworthy source for a lot of michiganders when they read their news and then in the middle i have our newsletter here that has events coming up our you know our overview of our project the um contact information if they want to learn more but on the back it has um summaries of events that we've had in the past and some sort of um educational component just to kind of walk people through um a sustained uh a sustainable understanding of what like what verbiage we're using when we're talking to i don't want to talk about weatherization and electrification if no one knows what i'm talking about um and that's been a part of the challenges of understanding where people are at with sustainability as well is we might not use the same words for similar things um and then also we went to the green fair and had a booth there this year and then the one on the far right for event outreach is what we use there all right so moving on to climate change and resilience i do have a photo here of our community cleanup that was um everyone that came out for the community there um but one of the first things i want to talk about is bcc as a resilience hub we do have our north side community center at community action network already outfitted for solar panels and is a resilience hub for the city of ann arbor already so um we're excited to bring bcc in as another one of those for our company and already have had you know the experience of going through that edge as well so it really lends it as an easier task and with bryan community center being the largest food pantry in washington county it really opens up not just food security stabilization for our community but also the rest of ann arbor and washington county as i stated but you know when we're looking at food security and other things that create sustainable environments for people to help them thrive we should be looking outside of bryant anyway but we're excited to be able to service our neighborhood and a couple other things are that we've seen that come with their own challenges that are part of our home evaluations our weatherization electrification which would be the end game opportunities for us to be able to address when it comes to our home assessment so i'm going to go a bit out of order here but right now one of our biggest things that we're working on is home energy evaluations we have two different options for residents we first have a virtual self-evaluation option that's completed with a staff member from can elevate or the a20 ambassadors or osi we have quite a plethora of people that are getting trained to do this which we're very excited about um and we love just having that again a very different and diverse professional background interest of sustainability the resident is paid with a 50 visa gift card and this is all done over the phone um and we've done a couple practice rounds and also have a tr a training video already made because we did a virtual out of crystal stewards our outreach specialist home so if anyone has any questions that's a part of something that we can default to in the process and also allows residents to see how it's done you know gives them again a little bit more trust in the program and what we're doing and it's a little less invasive one of the challenges that we've seen with our in person as i'll get to comprehensive evaluations is that they are inside of their homes about two hour long two hour long services you're not paid for them up front although they are valued around 300 um but residents do find that a little bit invasive um we've seen in the area that residents are worried about you know that the state of their home um you know whether that's cleanliness or need to have updates on their homes um or they're you know we've been home ridden as a society for two and a half years at this point i think we all have things that we are a little bit worried about when it comes to how we're living right now um but obviously that's very accentuated in um under-resourced communities so some of the things that we're looking for going back to weatherization electrification when we go into our homes is um you know do we need to make any basic repairs on these homes you know is there a hole in the roof and that's why someone's not interested in sustainability i mean i um that's one of the very specific examples that has really hit home for us is that you know we want to go in and talk about you know changing their stows and you know getting into like different discussions of um you know electrifying their house so they can get solar panels someday but that's not important to someone who has really basic needs like getting their getting their roof fixed getting installation fixed up and obviously those things all lend themselves to sustainability so we want to ensure that we're making homes comfortable for everyone as well we've really we started you know a part of that too as our language towards these evaluations is there we want to say their home energy evaluations for comfort and then in addition sustainability we even started out using the word audit and that was not a fan favorite so we've moved on from that too um no one's interested in audits you know i'm not i don't think most people are so um that's been an interesting understanding for this as well so big picture when we go into people's homes is that we can gather data and then connect them with additional resources that might be available um so using our home assessments results we can um you know re reduce the energy used by creating um you know using weatherization tools like i stated there's some other programs that we're able to connect them with that can help with those big repairs on my um you know in their roofs and their insulation any big things that they might need windows any things like that um we're using thermal imaging tools when we go into the homes for those more comprehensive evaluations the home assessments that we're doing that are self-evaluations do have a little bit of wiggle room with what um what materials and electronics that we can bring in um but for the most part that's something that you really need a professional to come and do the imaging tools are um different i think we can get some of those in the future but as far as um you know assessing how much air is leaving your home through your window we do have a lot more like comprehensive tools that we're using for the in-person ones um and our end game for this too is obviously electrifying the homes to encrypt that make them more efficient um we you know we spent about 90 percent of our time indoors and electric stoves um versus a gas stove i'm at about 50 to our gas stove emits about 50 to 400 percent more nitrogen than a get an electric stove would so it's far more healthy for our families to be inside their homes if we were to make a change like that but also doing in the math scale allows us to you know possibly get buyer discounts and really make physical changes to someone's home which will increase the trust tenfold in a project like this and one thing that we are using is wanting to use um like an improvement guide for the homes too so if we go into a home and they have x problem we want to ensure that we link them with the correct like resource in michigan that might help them whether or not it's a weatherization tool but um just kind of being a human services hub as we are at bcc but ensuring that if we're going to a home we're addressing issues as we see them because nothing's worse than seeing a problem and walking right by it that decreases trust in an instant and they never want to be a part of this project so um that's something that we're working on right now as well just to kind of have a you know someone like me or someone i'm training in the future especially it can look at the guide and say oh they have a hole in the roof or they have issues with their windows go to this resource and we can help find them funding all right and then our third one here is public health and human services like i said we want to be able to connect them with other resources in ann arbor or michigan that might already be doing work like this because we're not you know while this going fully decarbonized in a neighborhood is a very novel idea helping residents with issues in their home is not so some of the things already being offered in the city of ann arbor are aging in place and that requires a home evaluation for sustainability so we would already be doing part of that initial assessment to get older folks in our neighborhood which is a pretty decent amount of our neighborhood connected with a resource that would help make those market changes um to their homes and help them feel more comfortable and then i as i already spoke out we have weatherization as an option as well for people that has already you know already happening so we want to ensure that we're not remaking the wheel in a way that it doesn't need to happen we want to ensure that we're also being collaborative with our work too um we work with our residents on communication with dte and other providers just to ensure that they can make their bills they're not being evicted they never get any of their resources turned off during the winter during the summer you know always we want to ensure that they're as comfortable as possible and their needs are being met that's something we're already doing but once we get more of this information we'll be able to do that tenfold i have an example of some of the information we're able to get at the bottom but what we can get in a residence um uh like online profile in dt is pretty comprehensive um and we have um quite a compilation of their work too so we can see what the whole neighborhood is using as well which helps us a lot in our data collection um also helping renters negotiate changes with landlords because we do have a 50 50 split with our neighborhood while some of them own that some residents own their homes and are you know obviously able to make the decision to be a part of this program maybe not able to you know have the resources to do so but landlords are very um or have been a little bit hesitant to do some of the evaluations to remember or to make changes because they may not be able to to the neighborhood while our home assessments don't change anything in their homes they're not trying to sell you anything those are just for information basis or on an information basis um we do want to ensure that landlords know about all of that and we can help renters get this evaluation done and then negotiate with their landlords to you know either provide incentives for them to make these changes but also ensure that their renters being treated fairly as well but we also have a lot of ecological benefits for the neighborhood health but going forward with this project it's not just about electrifying our homes our tree ten thousand trees initiative through ann arbor has also benefited brian as i said earlier in our tree planting um this allows our community to get free trees um you know throughout the entirety of this program and it takes away invasive species and it also just allows our neighborhood to feel more comfortable and more like a community um and one of the things that has been historically an issue the bryant neighborhood is flooding um and some of the things that we've been working on um are rain gardens we have one in front of bcc but the master gardening class that was held was actually specific to rain gardens um so that gives our residents the knowledge that they need to um create a rain garden in their home or in their neighborhood wherever they see fit to allow them to have some sort of like personal representation um in uh moving forward with that um but then some of our next steps that we have are creating um a very specific communication strategy with the neighborhood so it can be easily replicated in the rest of the neighborhoods that can can influence which again is another huge bonus for canned working on this project is bryant is just one of six community centers we have seven ones in a school but we have six community centers that um influence their own sets of communities brian's the only one that doesn't work specifically with the ann arbor housing commission a lot of the other ones are a lot of our other community centers are inside specific units in the neighborhoods they might be influencing 16 to 30 families but that's still 16 to 30 families in the city of ann arbor and while brian might be on the biggest scale it's going to be way easier to replicate in neighborhoods that we have more influence over um so create a communication strategy because you know i'm not going to be here forever crystal's not going to be here forever so we want to ensure that all of our other employees and other people that hop in on this project from any other area are able to go forward with this um we're working on itemized rosters for community interest um so you know while we have resources to do home assessments we need to ensure that we have people signed up for them or on a waiting list to go forward as well and have their availability um and we are saying too as we find more funding opportunities that a lot of the funders will come in and ask if we have interest already and are waiting for it so we don't want to have a situation where we get funding and don't have the people in line in order to take part in any of the any of the initiatives um we do have two families waiting on solar fitting for their houses right now too while i mentioned solar and queen to interest which is very very exciting um but still some apprehension from the neighborhood so you know while again i would jump at any opportunity to get solar for my home i think it's very different for everyone what they feel comfortable with so we're really excited that we were able to move forward with that too some of our current funding opportunities that we're working with or that are you know lines in the fire are the mcknight foundation which we have gotten money from in this past year but it ends i want to say in about a month but we've already reapplied for that foundation so we should be seeing um we already feel like we have a very positive feedback with them because it's a continued grant um but we get our formal it responds here soon we're working with solar moonshot the trowbridge foundation the j40 fund the j40 fund is specific to energy work in underserved neighborhoods um that work with a government enterprise and a non-profit so we are a very good fit for this so i have my fingers crossed for them as well an epa grant to deal with doe weatherization and leap so we have a lot of opportunities here going forward for funding not just for community resources but also hoping to get someone here on full-time employment or at least part-time employment um so then someone like me or someone like crystal can have the the ability to stay here longer on a different basis because my best year is only one year but the hope would be that i would stay on to the project longer or that crystal would be able to take on you know greater responsibilities like i stated earlier it's great to have a lot of people involved but having the same people creates a lot more trust for the neighborhood all right but that's all i have so if you have any questions feel free to jump in but thank you so much for having me um i have a question from mark cleavy so i have uh two questions um one of them i i very much appreciate the messaging difficulties between audit and assessment but i also um having run a lot of these programs myself at the state and local levels know that um using a standardized audit methodology is is essential to getting funding from michigan saves and and so those so i guess my question is not so much concern what you're calling it but you know are you using a standardized methodology industry accepted methodology that you know reputable financial institutions would would recognize like michigan saves because their loans require that the assessment either solar assessment or energy efficiency upgrade assessment that assessment be included in the loan packaging um so are you are you using a standardized methodology for these assessments well i think part of the messaging that we like what we're focused on is just ensuring that the residents are more um like gauging how a resident will respond to the wording if we have any funder that needs it to be out like you know uh what's the word i'm looking for um worded in a specific way we still call them audits amongst ourselves um or assessments you know here and there sometimes it's evaluation we really have focused on evaluation for the area um as far as residents go because that has seemed to work the best and we get the most responses um but in our like cool conversations between like me and osi we've been using assessment but like to answer your question point blank if someone needs it to be called something else as long as the structure is there and it looks like what they need it to be as far as what an audit includes or the assessment includes we are our verbiage stands is whatever the funder would need okay yeah mark can i pick up that really quick because there's new ones here i think one is that all of the the assessments whether it's virtual or of course if we have a home energy you know auditor coming in they actually do meet the home energy score requirements but it's plus it's and there's so much more that the neighbors have identified and second a lot of these households are not going to be eligible for machine safes products which michigan saves is one of our collaborators they are economically out of the lending space version so we're trying to fix that with a lot of the grants workers doing okay so great uh second thing is this issue that's come up between the environmental commission and the energy commission since since i've been at it has to do with tree planting so i love the 10 000 tree planting um my question is given the fact that you're trying to do solar and some of the people in the neighborhood have obviously wanted to do solar and i've done solar assessments in that neighborhood myself as well as larry and others is the decision being made every time someone plants a tree is that siding is that uh solar access being taken into consideration because we can you know do an awful lot of damage uh you know what basically if you want to do solar when we throw people in into the lap of dte is their only option by covering up their roof with a tree um i think you know we're shooting ourselves in the foot so is that happening is that um somebody making a decision yes we're going to plan tree and we're going to plant here instead of there solar access is it being protected i'll put that question to missy because i'm not personally involved in the 10 000 trees initiative yeah it's a really good question and i'll say that we haven't approached it yet because we we've only done the tree planting we did is uh the 10 000 trees you're familiar with we have the free tree giveaway this is the community tree planting and which these are big trees you know like 150 300 sized trees so we only planted 20 of them in the neighborhood and i don't think any of the placements because i was on site doing tree planting would interfere with solar access based on like we planted far off to the side as opposed to like impacting southern exposure but i think your point is a good one that we need to integrate that as we do more of these events so when i raised this point um you know six or seven years ago at the beginning and several times other the answer i've gotten back um from previously from matt naught and others um on the energy environmental commission is well it's not something we have to worry about because we can just do community solar and as of today i checked there's no consumer community solar law passed in michigan um and i is doubtful we will have one so this issue of uh you know being sure that we're not disrupting uh distributed generation isn't just philosophy it's not just a nice thing it is we have an opportunity to expand our tax dollars to in the words of chairman mursky optimize the impact we make on climate change um and so i think we need to you know be sure that we're not shooting hurting ourselves doing doing something i'm all for tree planting i love the idea but i'm also also want to see the sustainable energy utility work and if we start covering up roofs um we're not going to be doing ourselves any favors and bryant neighborhood is an ideal candidate for a community solar project underneath a sustainable energy utility so thank you i apologize for the background racket here at the office but um thanks for the presentation madison well done um i also a big supporter of bryant in fact i have two children that went to bryant elementary i did probably one of the first energy audits of the school didn't have very good results i remember that and getting into the dispute with the school board a little bit on that but um i just wanted to say you know the goals look great i just hope that you're documenting things as you know the greenhouse gas emission inventory the baseline that you start with from a decarbonization point of view needs to be very carefully built so that you have some place to go from and i trust you're working really hard on getting the boundary conditions laid out um if there's anything we can do at the energy commission level to help in that front um there's some of us that have been in that space and can help you in that world i'm sure osi's involved very greatly as well and anything we can do to help is good just kind of curious what your timeline is you mentioned you want to be the first decarbonized community have you defined what that means and what the timeline is to achieve that yeah i think our goal is five years missy can jump in on this one too um i know that it's uh five years is our main goal for that but as far as um itemizing what things we get done in each of those years i think there's work still to be done and what that looks like but it's also very fluid with our interest in how we get out in the community as well but i'll let missy continue that if there's more specifics that i um can't answer madison's right 2027 is the aspirational goal that we have okay a lot of heavy lifting let us know what we can do to help absolutely thank you so much any other questions i i have a very quick one hopefully could you give us um maybe a one or two minute overview of the community action network um i heard the organization but that is it and maybe there's others on the call too that are as still informed as i am yeah no problem um so we are a conglomeration we are quite we're lit we're named quite aptly um we are a conglomeration of community centers across ann arbor um we have seven community centers that are standalone um or six clinics community centers that are standalone seven including the one that we have in brick elementary we span across washtenaw county because brick is in ypsilanti um we have the bryan community center is the only one that is based in the community that is of homes that are not covered by the ann arbor housing commission but then our others are um housing covered by the housing commission um and then also we are just very much so centered in that community inside of um different units that they might have we offer all three of those main pillars of work in all of our community centers we have food distributions even in our brick elementary to all of our residents they come in different days depending on the community center and the need in the community as well also based on different types of delivery methods if we can deliver to the neighborhoods um and so that one is so that's our food security station like i said bryan community cyber covers all of washington county and operates five days per week um so we see quite a few more residents and community members there um that is connected to food gatherers um that is our main form of food distribution um from them as well and we work on tonnage so the amount of residents they get determines the amount of food that we get from them our educational enrichment um is all-year-thematic curriculum we work with students in after school program and in summer camp we bring in vistas like me to work in our all year after school program but also bring in our very shortened amount of three-month um summer camp asb staff as well they're through americorps vista or through um university of michigan we get quite a few um pas from them we have a lot of social work students that come in and work at our centers and then additionally we have our um housing and human services so um housing security obviously in the centers that are covered by the commission is covered a little bit differently as it might at bryan community center um but those are our main things um we have one more pillar which is sustainability at the very end too and this project really covers that sustainability sustainable pillar we're working on that very specifically with our diversity and inclusion um programs that we're trying to not trying obviously very much so enforcing in our inclusion going forward too but we saw a need to ensure that we're not just helping communities we're trying to get people out of housing commission homes and standing on their own and being able to strive in their neighborhood and strive where they are and thrive so um we uh so that's one big thing though one of the big things that we're working on that we've recently included in one of our goals in our mission um but really those those four pillows are our biggest ones thank you very much missy go ahead you have something you have to say yeah yeah i just wanted to add one additional element of this project and of course we've focused and madison's fabulous job on the sustainability elements but it's not lost i think on many people on the line that when we're successful there will be a demand for the neighborhood and so part of what we're focusing on is how we directly confront gentrification and how we focus on intergenerational wealth accumulation and neighborhood stabilization so there are other elements of this project that are very much related to the goals that we have but it's things like if we are able to lower bills how are we helping people with financial literacy to make some investments uh to put that money aside so that they can pass that home on or how are we working with households uh to make sure they have a will so the house actually passes you know to next of kin which we sadly had a case that that didn't happen in the neighborhood and so there are other things here that we didn't necessarily talk about but i wanted to name it because it is no one has done this number one and every effort that we have seen that's made really great sustainability progress has led to some gentrification so i just i think it's worthwhile to name it thanks very much uh does anybody else have any questions for madison or missy madison thanks very much we appreciate your passion and your enthusiasm and all the great that your great work that you're doing and everybody on your team go back and tell them that uh we we're really um excited about this initiative and certainly the energy commission um as a commission but also individually and the community is there to help support you where where it's necessary and appropriate thank you so much thank you for having me today missy was there anything else on the topic or do we move now on to zach's presentation of her yeah madison would you mind stopping screen sharing that's okay no worries and then we'll move on to herd and i just wanted to share with the commission that we're working on a standardized format to update you on projects and initiatives and brian will be a recurring thing so if you want to join us for a one-off event a public engagement event or if you want to have more sustained engagement we're going to start offering that because i i think after this meeting it sounds like the commission might be interested in joining us in that work so more soon uh and with that zach can you please tell us a little bit about what's going on with the home energy rating disclosure program yeah i'd be happy to uh thank you missy thank you chairman commissioners and council members for having me um for those who i haven't met yet my name is zach i prefer him i am a community engagement specialist in the office of sustainability and i'm happy to be here tonight to present on the home energy rating disclosure let me get my screen share going is that coming through thumbs up great um so uh yeah during my time working on this initiative um it was previously known as uh the home energy audit disclosure but given the conversation we just had with madison we up too agreed that audit is not a very keen word when it comes to messaging so we changed it to help which is what another community has used is the home energy labeling program turns out that is trademarked however so that's why we landed on home energy rating disclosure so there's some good reason for the name changes um and what we're we're aiming to do with this um let's see there we go um so throughout this presentation we'll cover some of the whys and hows of the program but we'll start with what this program is intended to accomplish in ann arbor um and let's see my computer suddenly got persnickety just moments before i begin sharing so i don't know what you're seeing at this point you see slide two slide two fantastic thank you um we'll try to keep on top of that um and so what we want to accomplish with this um is first help prospective home buyers have access to information about home energy's consumption homes energy consumption before they're committed to buying it and this of course gives them a couple of different benefits but the overall goal is that we hope this will ultimately drive a market push that values um energy efficiency so while a home energy rating disclosure like this um uh this initiative officially lies within strategy three which is to transition our homes and businesses to more to being more energy efficient it also helps inform strategy 2 which is focused on electrification a little bit so this is part of a suite of initiatives that we're working on and some of these you might have already heard the commercial benchmarking ordinance was passed unanimously by council and that is a reporting program for buildings with 20 000 square feet or more we're also working on a green rental housing program that just wrapped up a task force which put together some policy recommendations for a rental focused policy the home energy rating disclosure will cover um non-rented buildings um and then there could likely be something similar for buildings that are smaller than twenty 000 square feet but that are commercial so this is where the herd rating falls and essentially it covers all single dwelling units either ones that sit on their own lots or what ones that are attached and so why do we need this program well um it's partly because we need let's start at the beginning and i believe most of you are so familiar with h zero plan and so that's the strategy two and three that i mentioned in here um and that's that's ultimately why we're starting down this path um because it's it's mentioned there um but it's also part of it these suite of ordinances that i mentioned um but more than that there is some uh drive for this from um the real estate community on paper when they are were assessed by the national association of realtors uh many midwest realtors found energy efficiency to be something that was valuable and certainly something that was important to home buyers when it comes to the operational costs of their homes at the same time there aren't very many realtors that are super comfortable talking about this and so focusing on home energy rating disclosure and supporting the real estate community would the intent is to address both of these to bring forward the information that the home buyers would like to see while also helping the realtors to feel informed and know how to educate home buyers on this um so who benefits from something like a herd initiative um well a lot of us uh increased consumer literacy uh when when more home buyers understand um what they're buying generally that can lead to increased consumer action so it informs them about what sort of performance and energy costs and cost-effective energy improvements they could make on their homes uh it also drives economic development there will be job creation and local investment of energy savings um as we start to see the demand for energy efficiency unfold and there's also um community development by uh instituting something like the herd initiative it clarifies and addresses some of the energy burden risk especially for low to moderate income households by giving them a more total cost of their living situation there are insights from open data that can drive innovation and inform future policies and finally it's a consumer protection for home buyers uh it it informs major purchasing decisions and the ongoing cost of home ownership so to take a closer look at some of those from the home buyers standpoint it gives them access to energy cost information before they purchase and then it gives them more cost effective energy efficiency recommendations um it lowers the energy costs which uh ideally if the action is taken which supports lower income households and then once somebody owns the house and is looking to sell it it increases their opportunity to showcase their cost-effective efficiency upgrades um so what we can see sometimes are increased values uh associated with homes that have high energy scores um and what what's key to that is that it doesn't devalue homes that have lower energy scores so similarly to something like the benchmarking ordinance it's an additive value in the real estate community homes with energy scores tend to sell faster and so that's that's helpful for real estate agents who rely on the sale of homes for their income it also allows real estate agents to provide a better service to their customers because home buyers will feel more secure in their huge investment and it also sort of standardizes a method of discussing energy performance with clients uh kind of creates a more of a comfortable space for those conversations to happen uh and then the community also benefits because of course the continued reduction of carbon emissions from buildings uh promotes a healthier safer and more comfortable community and it increases the quality of the housing stock as well um so i believe that most of you are somewhat familiar perhaps with a home energy score um but just to give you a quick overview of how how that works the home energy score is uh established by the us department of energy so this is a pretty standardized means of giving a metric to a home's energy performance there are often parallels drawn between a home energy score and say the miles per gallon rating of a of a standard internal combustion engine um and it just sort of standardizes the language so that when there is a number associated with it you know what it means and in a similar way that you wouldn't buy a car an internal combustion engine car anyway without knowing what kind of gas mileage it got it gets we we intend to bring that around into the home realm why would you buy a home without knowing what kind of energy efficiency rating it has and so it's a one to ten scale with five being average uh generally or using more more than 50 of of the homes um so for homeowners and sellers um the way it works to get a home energy score is that you would have a doe a department of energy certified home energy assessor come evaluate your homes total energy use and then put that assessment into a report and the home energy score report includes information um of course it's got the home energy score um and the data that's used to calculate that home energy score but it also uh includes home energy use um energy estimates for uh improvement recommendations that have a 10 year or less payback rate and if you're selling that the home energy store is included in your home's energy listing ideally under the proposed herd initiative and then that report is given to the buyer when you go to sell your home when we look at what kind of herd what kind of impact heard would have we we hope that it is huge ideally it will have a big impact um it we want it to be educating the home buyers and um helping realtors uh inform and educate folks and kind of drive that market so um the home energy score is intended to recommend certain energy efficiency upgrades that homeowners can make in their home which not only lowers their energy use and their energy costs but uh is a stronger selling point for them [Music] it makes their home more comfortable to live in if they do the upgrades there are things such as dte rebates that you can be eligible for for certain upgrades and those upgrades will be outlined in the home energy score some impacts that we've seen across the country are that the home sell quicker so in chicago for instance they spent fewer days on the market than those that didn't have um a home energy assessment and in in portland uh it informed a lot of respondents on what they might invest in in the first year uh we found that the first the projects that are chosen within the um sorry the most projects that are uh decided upon for new homeowners is are made within the first year those decisions are made pretty early on and so when you have a home energy score that's available to them when they buy the home it helps inform those decisions early on and in austin texas 12 of those actually acted upon that information um so the ac triple e which is the american council for an energy efficient economy ah got it just released a report that reveals um that moderately and severely energy burned residents increased pretty drastically in 2020 it's probably covered related um but it was already on the climb and um when i say energy burdened that means if you're moderately energy burdened that's you're spending 30 or more of your income on energy costs or severely is 50 or more of your income on energy costs um and that that um obviously is is a concern for many residents um particularly those who are low income because chances are good that they're paying more of their income towards their energy costs uh and so something like a herd initiative would help reveal more of that total cost of living sometimes you'll see that denoted as tcl in certain reports and it makes home ownership a little bit more accessible if you're getting a more complete picture out of the gate from the get-go um so there is a bit of a catch uh with with the herd and um that is that we have found that there has been some lack of expressed interest anyway from homeowners um or home buyers rather when we have we've met with a number of different agents in ann arbor and uh they have all said that um that uh there is not a lot of interest from home buyers um and they'll say that they want it but when it comes down to choosing between an energy efficient home or not usually the energy efficiency loses out um and we we believe that it's mostly because that cost benefit um of spending a little bit more money up front to get the energy efficiency uh in exchange for lower operating costs is kind of lost in translation fat communication is not clear at this point we don't believe um and and we've got this information because we've met with several agents representing like reinhardt realtors and keller williams and berkshire hathaway and howard hanna um some of the largest agencies in ann arbor uh and and i specifically chose agents who have pursued certain designations like eco broker is one designation since ecobroker was established the national association of realtors released a green designation is what they call it now and so i've met with both eco brokers and green designated realtors um because they i chose them for their understanding of the topic um and they say that while home buyers want energy efficiency they're not quite yet willing to prioritize it um and homeowners are uncertain of the benefits um [Music] and and they'll end up choosing other amenities if you will over energy efficiency i don't believe uh i don't like to refer to energy efficiency as an amenity but that's that's how it's seen pretty pretty wide pretty widely and we don't yet have a local example of success um for a similar ordinance so ann arbor area realtors are a little hesitant to be the first to make that move um and um for for instance in when portland passed theirs we saw a lot of other municipalities follow suit pretty shortly after hillsborough oregon bend eugene milwaukee but but in michigan there aren't any yet they have quite this ordinance so ann arbor would be one of the first and there's a lot of hesitancy when we talk among a lot of the agents and one thing that a lot of them mention is that though a home energy score costs roughly 150 dollars that generally isn't the final determinant for home buyers um they find that uh it there's a lot of process that's added and that is where there's a lot of hesitancy so that said um we used all of that information to sort of to inform a program uh and and how how we want to develop it um let's see here um so this is kind of a timeline for what we're working with uh starting from now this this timeline dates back a little bit to when we first started working on it and at that time we worked hard to build upon the work that was already done by this commission in the past and we also began engaging with real estate agents throughout ann arbor and we've had a number of discussions with them to date simultaneously to that we began seeking out additional resources such as national cohorts of other municipalities who were exploring similar initiatives and and work with them to kind of learn together what everyone is experiencing there has also been similar ordinances across the country that have been passed and um there are there is a lot to learn from those examples and so we've been meeting with several of those municipalities to hear about their experiences as well additionally we participated in a working group with rmi who had completed a lot of research and analysis of these other municipalities and as well as certain different policy pathways they analyzed both the successes and some of the challenges that a lot of these municipalities have faced and so as we grounded ourselves last year in the best practices research we also gained a better understanding of the perspectives held by agents here in ann arbor and by our own city's leaders and we decided to take a closer look at our approach to this work and to this initiative and based on what we have learned we decided to take a blend of a voluntary approach and a pilot and i'll talk about those a little bit more here in just a moment but those are currently in this timeline are things that we're working on fleshing out and developing and we are focusing on strategic stakeholder engagement and building some partnerships with organizations who can help us do these home energy scores and support the market that that would drive once we um have that developed and ready to go we'll we'll go ahead and launch that pilot program and and get that implemented uh later this year and we'll gather the information that we can from that pilot and do some program assessment we'll make any adjustments as necessary and then open it up for public input so that we can we can hear from the public about what they think um and what their desires are or get some feedback on the policy as it was presented uh and then move it forward to legal review and and get the ordinance um approved um and so according to this timeline we're aiming for early next year for that to have all been completed so let's take a little closer look at um sort of the program development that we've um landed on um there are similarities between the the soft launch and the phase-in of the benchmarking policy so um if for those who are familiar with the benchmarking policy or for those who aren't rather we're starting with the largest square footage buildings and we're phasing them in and we're lowering that square footage threshold so that more and more buildings are included in the policy or in the requirement year after year but that's not to stop anyone from benchmarking um right now and so that's what this voluntary soft launch would be is that we will do education and outreach to inform realtors of what they can do right now and encourage them to start getting home energy scores on homes immediately um [Music] meanwhile while we're doing that we'll do a dedicated pilot we've already identified some realtors who are interested in pursuing this that would sort of champion um taking this on and and through that process we can i identify certain hiccups and um that that might arise but more so we we believe that it will demonstrate the ease of use how simple it is to get a home energy score for homes um and and really get the word out there about the intent and they we have we're building some partnerships right now that i'll talk about in just a moment that could be offering some free or reduced assessments through through um this pilot program um and actually let's just go ahead and jump to those so walker miller is a um [Music] is a detroit based company they focus on lower income energy services they are a private entity that can set their own program qualifications and so that sets them apart from federal programs that have a qualification maximum of 200 percent the poverty level but walker miller can set whatever they want um they have a full-time auditor on staff who and and they intend to expand um and they they focus a lot on workforce development it's a core competitive competency of walker miller and so um we think that walker miller could help us educate and inform the market in terms of the home energy scores and realtor engagement there's also the green home institute they um are have a lot of expertise in issuing certificates through the green home professional um institute and home uh home energy score assessing lead accreditation they've got a ton of different certifications that they certify for and they can also help meet the demand as needed for home energy score assessors um we're also working um with the ecology center who has a a lot of experience with climate action especially when it comes to um uh policies there they've got a strong advocacy network and we believe that they could help as well uh with some of the promotion of the the work and we've already began um the communication with them and finally michigan saves uh to kind of complete the picture we want to make sure that once we have given home energy scores and informed homeowners of their their energy demand we want to connect them with funding opportunities and competent contractors who can help them do the work that they have identified in their homes um so on that note i think i'll i'll wrap it up here and see what kind of questions that we have but otherwise thank you so much for having me thank you zach uh questions for zach mark commissioner this is a question for i guess zach and and missy um i know that the sustainable energy utility unlike the detroit edison consumers energy um actually has an incentive to have their customers be more energy efficient so i would assume uh preferred from missy that energy efficiency services and and uh programs and stuff would be very important to seu so my question is missy is is the herd the tool that the seu would use to evaluate homes and would the you know standardization of the herd used across the board and for homes that receive staff city dollars and help under an seu model i heard would be it and will be at some point a powerful tool i think for the seo and whatever we're doing because it's giving us strategic information and really customized information on how we can help homeowners new homeowners make improvements in their homes that improve comfort and accessibility and then the seou if it exists is the vehicle by which we can help them make those improvements finance those improvements which is pretty exciting i'm going to take that though mark and go one additional step further that zach didn't talk about you which is we had explored with the department of energy can we pay as a city for people to get certified as home energy score raiders and the answer is no okay we're very clear that we uh you have to go through other training to get that this is an add-on and so that's sort of stymied us but here's something we can do we could eventually hire a city person that does them yeah yeah yeah right but i guess that's something right so but i guess is this the methodology in other words if you know let's say we have a a home that wants to use this solar program put solar on their house but the city's gonna going to go and do that the amount of energy that the city the homeowner uses and potentially wastes reduces the value of the investment of the city putting on so there has to be some kind of a a standard um and a you know a scale based on btus or or watts per square foot of the house it has to has have an energy performance standard i guess it looks to me like heard is that standard that the city's adopting is that you know we we're gonna end up with two different systems here or is the seo is that is it your expectation the sedu you and the city will both use heard yeah to clarify heard would be about information uh it is not a building performance standard so the yeah i thought the home energy standard the doe enter h home versus building performance standard would say if you don't score a certain level like you have to hit a certain mark within that system right right right right that's the distinction i imagine that they're i i think you're raising a really good point and we would have to get to that structure figuring out what's the goal within the seo to get to a certain home energy store and where are we making investments right there's a prioritization sort of factor in there so we haven't gotten there so if the energy commission were to support herd are we you know helping the seu or or not or just you know you are helping the community you are not hurting any other path that we might take okay thanks remember breaks thanks um so if i'm understanding correctly uh this is sort of it's kind of at the phase of beginning to pilot this and the hope is that you might be able to move relatively move through that and by next this time next year that we would be looking at um but potentially an ordinance that city council would look at adopting is that right do i get that timeline right yeah and so i'm curious what the time frame is for some of the other communities that have adopted ordinances like this if it's um if the housing market was different because i can imagine that one of the reasons that this isn't particularly uh um a big interest of folks is that they're trying to find any house that they can afford as opposed to you know whatever the energy audit might say so i'm curious how does the the time frame for some of the success and the data that was captured in those other cities like what do you have do you have any sense of what the housing market looked like there i mean austin obviously is a very it's a growing city with affordable you know some of the communities that were mentioned or not affordable communities so just curious yeah that's a great question a lot of the communities um passed theirs at differing times than um what we're seeing now so with in this post-pandemic world the housing market has kind of gone a little haywire so i'm not sure exactly what parallels at this time in this market we could draw between uh what existed when those were passed but um i mean we're talking about the likes of portland that also has a very hot housing market um so i don't think i don't feel like i answered your question there it sounds like it was you know it's varied and there are some things that are comparable here i guess my my concern is a little bit just um the reality of folks that are trying to kind of buy a house in the ann arbor market and it's people are very different sort of um just it really varies but i'm wondering i mean it seems like the real benefit of putting this in ordinance forum is really the educate the information that the city is going to get in terms of how these houses rank and then the ability to potentially approach a whole bunch of homeowners new homeowners at the same time and try to figure out kind of efficiencies of scale in some ways because i can imagine folks are feeling a little house poor at that moment in time um and so i'm curious kind of how how because it is hard you know like that that when you're first in a home to sort of um prioritize making those investments um before you kind of lose that report and that information curious how you're kind of thinking about that yeah um one thing i heard you uh mention about the city collecting data i want to make sure that it's clear that this isn't about the city collecting data the primary goal here is to inform home buyers and we want home buyers to have the information and in fact in the draft furnace there is no [Music] requirement that the city uh that the information be provided to the city the city will verify whether or not that information is um being shared on the uh home listing for instance and um and and will enforce making sure that it is is is there um ultimately when once this is in full implementation um and to that note i also just want to point out that this is one pathway that we've developed um based on some of the best practices that we've learned from rmi and some other existing ordinances that are in place in other cities there that this this timeline is is based on that really strategic stakeholder engagement which is something that we learned from rmi was pretty critical in a lot of other municipalities almost all of the municipalities that we talked to in oregon for instance are uh were had a hard time with with the realtors and it's uh it's they're a well-organized community and rightly so this is where they make their income so you i cannot fully understand i wouldn't want somebody else coming in and disrupting my workflow um if it if my income uh depended on it but um i think that's where the careful education and outreach comes in is because as we do careful um engagement to make sure that they are properly informed on what this is intended to do i think it would um it it could behoove us to do that but i mean yeah no i absolutely i agree they are um they're definitely you know an influential organization the um and you know it makes sense to to engage them early and and often in terms of crafting the program and figuring out what you know what pieces they think would actually be beneficial in terms of um making this of you know seeing this as something of value to the folks that they're trying to sell homes to because if if what they know is that the reality is that this is something that people you know say they want to prioritize they don't really come you know they don't really and they're really do that are there ways that we can craft the program so that it becomes something that then does demonstrate value and i i guess i wonder why i mean i'm definitely on the spectrum of being comfortable with data being shared with government so maybe not everybody is maybe that is not something that everybody welcomes but um i i would think that actually us receiving that information then allows um the city to kind of go out as we have with the solarize program in some ways and be able to then offer cost savings for residents and so that would seem to be a bigger selling point but i'm kind of curious why is it crafted that we wouldn't get that data um well uh i suppose there's no reason we couldn't uh at that in i think at this juncture the the reason it wasn't is because most other municipalities are not requiring that um because the focus is more on homeowner or home buyer information access to information than it is about the anything else but uh i'm i'm happy to explore that yeah i need something to explore i don't know if it's you know it worth asking others i i you know if i may weigh in on in that particular point um so i was also involved in the early efforts behind the ordinance and um we had multiple conversations with portland and a service provider that was helping portland and everything that zach said is correct as far as the primary objective um but portland specifically mentioned that a byproduct if you will or an additional benefit was exactly what you're getting at um this information because it's in appearing in the mls is therefore in the public domain and they were able to look at that data and it's fairly randomized because you're having home sales all over the place so um obviously not initially but over time you're starting to get a pretty good understanding statistically of what are the home energy scores in various neighborhoods and what kinds of things are potentially identified as needs in those neighborhoods so that is indeed a secondary benefit um at one that might then help us further down the road um with the seo and with electrification and other things like that so um at least portland mentioned that i don't recall other cities mentioning it that doesn't mean that that wasn't a benefit elsewhere if i'm in japan i wanted to elevate something that zach said and i want to cushion it in the sense of i can understand that there's likely a lot of frustration that this hasn't kind of moved forward yet and i don't know if folks caught it that zach was talking about this collaboration that he's a part of with other vanguard cities that are doing this work and there was some look forward and a lot of look back on what they wish they would have done and i think that's the recommendation that's being brought forward is taking those lessons and thinking about how to craft this i i recognize we could choose brute force you know and move this forward we're trying to present something though that actually has in perhaps an idealistic sense i want the realtors with us like i want to get to a point where a home energy score comes onto the market and realtors often work with their clients and gift them something at point of sale what if that gift is actually an a20 packet and information or the beginning of an audit or or some sort of improvement like how do we this is information how do we get to change right like how do we create a culture and an ecosystem that fundamentally moves from a home energy score to transformational practices in the home that improve comfort health and safety so i i really want to applaud zach i know this is super super frustrating but he is trying to think about a program and i i just i think that's really that's frustrating that's hard work but thank you zach yeah thanks from others or zach did you want to say something or somebody else i was just going to say thanks to missy for that that phrasing that that's exactly what we're doing um you know i by and large it's in place um if the commission chose to do otherwise we theoretically could um but or no not but and at the same time there's there's information on on how other others have done i i feel optimistic because um the likes of hillsborough oregon for instance and another uh municipality that is escaping me in what might have been minneapolis have some great success stories with uh winning over their local board of realtors and it created a really strong bond they found that their realtors turned into their greatest advocates for the program and now they have a pretty successful and high um compliance rate so um that we're you know we're trying to use the information available to us to to craft this as best we could anyone else if not then um i'm going to speak up and this is probably going to be um of no surprise to zach and missy because i communicated with them over the weekend and posed a number of questions so um i want to go on record at least personally that um i would like to see us move as quickly as possible in implementing the herd program in the ordinance um as was mentioned um this is something that has been roughly three and a half to four years in the works um and we to to use the words of miss appleyard who called in earlier um the area under the emissions over time curve is extremely important and my my belief is that and this goes back i participated in two meetings with um the three members of the executive board of the uh realtors uh so-called the the board of realtors um the issues that are of concern today were the same issues that they had when we spoke with them two years ago they haven't changed um and they won't change in my view um in the next nine months um there is clearly a tension between ramming something down someone's throat and quick asking but my my concern is that we with climate action are going to be confronted with this in nearly everything that we do and maybe this is not a good analogy but we're going to have a climate uh millage on the ballot and if 60 or 51 approve the millage then there's going to be a lot of other people that aren't happy about it and that's going to be true with just about anything that we do there's going to be individuals and constituencies that fight this but i think we have to be driven by the crisis um it was declared an emergency by council but i think a lot of people would say that we're in a climate crisis and therefore um you know our job is to advise council my belief is that we should move forward as quickly as possible and that will be something that council determines in talking with staff and maybe inside conversations with members of the commission but i feel very strongly that there is a while there's benefits to waiting there is a significant opportunity cost roughly a thousand twelve hundred homes are sold in ann arbor as homes and condominiums every year so we're losing that number of data points um every year and uh you know i'm going to just bring up one other point when this was first posted on the presentation was dated in september and now we're in february and um you know we're losing time so every single one of the actions that we take i think it's really important that commission and staff and council think what are the trade-offs what are the opportunity costs what are the benefits and i'll just finish by saying one more time let's move quickly commissioner over back yeah i think i have to just weigh in briefly i totally agree with john you know if we have a decarbonisate you know a net zero by 2030 which i believe council you know has spoken on right um that's going to be impossible unless we do everything we can to move it ahead fast um you know we don't have any time to waste so i think we just have to give this a shot and if we get resistance we have to listen to that resistance and work out a an alternate solution but the sooner we push it through or recommend it the sooner we hopefully will have this kind of ordinance it makes total sense we're just not i mean if to decarbonize all the homes and buildings in ann arbor we have to do this um so that's my two cents thanks commissioner just a comment another question um you were talking about the uh talking with the real estate association and their position hasn't changed nothing's changed in two years um when i was the we took this to the state legislature in 2008 when i was managing the better business buildings program for the state and and have the same conversations and you know it hasn't changed in lansing either since then so i couldn't agree with you more that um you know all pollution is local so we better deal with this now so um so my question is this john if we can we put i know that we have a lag of a month so if we get a resolution you know put on the books today then we vote on it at the next meeting um do you have ver words verbiage you'd like to use it to propose for a resolution and if you do i'll be happy to say so moved and get this thing moving um if you got verbiage let's get it going otherwise i'll just say i you know propose we craft a resolution and somebody can second it but whatever whatever your privilege i think we should do it as oh well to answer that off the cuff because the idea i hadn't thought of before until um it came up uh tonight um i don't know that frankly we have to do a resolution um it's a formality i think one option we could do is have a show of hands um who who thinks we should move forward as quickly as possible um and the other is that um we basically follow the timeline and um simply osi and council would take that into advisement that's all we can do anyhow so i don't know that we need to craft a bunch of whereas statements and have a first reading and a second reading and everything else there may be benefit in that and i will yield the floor to council member briggs she had her hand up before that but she may want to comment on that yeah thanks sounds like piano practice or piano banging has begun in my side room um but i understand the desire to move quickly on this i understand the frustration of seeing something that's been sitting that feels like it's been sitting for a long period of time and seeing the resistance that happened a couple of years ago and feeling like it's still there i will say from my vantage point it is a heck of a lot easier to to move an ordinance forward and get support for it at the council table if in addition to the voices of folks that are opposing it there are voices of folks that support it and so this pilot program that's moving forward is building support from the real from folks that work as realtors and so and can speak to the success of it or um speak to the benefits of it and so i would prefer to at least see i mean as quickly as we can move forward i would think means helping to learn how this can work and be supported in our community and and be successful and honestly get just getting that getting the scores isn't enough we have to have people who are doing something with those scores right and so we want them to we want the realtors to be excited about it and talking about it in a positive way and there's taking a little bit of time to get that part right can build success for the program in the long term and so you know if we can't get there um after our pilot program then maybe we abandoned that idea but i would at least since staff seems to be working on this um i'd like to give them that opportunity to to build some support and to build some ideas for how we roll this out in the most successful way that's possible in our community any other comments so i'll weigh in again um you know that that overlaps with osi's position um i still feel strongly that we're going to with this pilot be working with realtors that are already inclined to support this um and certainly it will help to have voices in the realtor community that are supportive of this i just think that um what we're going to be confronted with every step of the way going back to commissioner overpeck's uh statement is every time that we do something with climate because because there is no social cost of of of of carbon in any of the calculations there are going to be people that are going to be um lined up against what we're doing so i think we just have to be cognizant of speed and one of the uh things that we talked about when we talked about these renewable energy criteria and principles is the principle of speed and i think we have to to really members remember that and there's going to be resistance um against this and there will clearly be in this case um but i think at least i'm belaboring the point you know where i stand i encourage others to speak up before we leave this topic and move on to the next one any other so commissioner levine sorry uh yeah i mean i'm kind of torn on this topic it does seem like something we talked about maybe three four years ago so it does seem like the idea has been around for a long time um on the other hand i do like the idea of getting more support behind it because the realtors are the ones that are ultimately going to be very involved in the program um my concern with the pilot and i don't fully know if there's a great way to fix this is that the benefit of this program as i see it is you can compare multiple properties that you're looking at whereas in a pilot i don't know how many people are going to be involved so a homeowner comes along and wants to look at some houses they're not going to have a lot of choices of ones that have these scores so i guess that's that's my biggest concern i guess is how are we gonna make a pilot that is gonna be be uh effective in showing how well this is going to work mr cover yes um i i fully support the concept and moving quickly but i also have to step back a bit because there are a lot of things that are on the plate all of which will need some attention and some support within the community i don't think you can assume that that support within the community is unbounded i think there is a limit and so because of that i think you really need to prioritize all the top things that you need to accomplish to get to the 20 30 goal i'm concerned that if i had to prioritize this this would not be in my top five but i'm just wondering what other people think i'm concerned that the population of the city does not have an unlimited amount of interest in doing all the things that we are lining up thank you any other comments before we leave the topic commissioner colin garcia thank you john i'm curious about the the pilot and how much of it has been designed so far if you could elaborate on that that'd be great zach certainly that's a great question um so the pilot right now is still program development um but some of the preliminary conversations that we've had with interested realtors would be getting dedication from the realtors who um would commit to all of their homes that they sell complying with what would be the the herd ordinance um and then using leveraging some of the collaborations that we've built with say walker miller who we've already begun discussion with who's putting together a format for how they could meet the demand for a pilot and or for an expanded full-fledged program [Music] to who could offer free home energy assessments and um the pilot i ideally would be free so that it would um show just how simple the process can be and just kind of remove any mental barriers for a lot of the realtors and and home buyers and just and show that it's really just a house visit um prior to the sale and the idea then is that once we have done that a number of times with through the pilot it will give us an opportunity to talk through any hiccups that the realtors have experienced during that time and make adjustments as necessary but also to just show how simple it is and once we have some realtors who uh have gone through the process and understand truly how easy and straightforward it is that that their word among their peers would be um i think that would be a strong leveraging tool how far before the sale is this um what's like what is the window of time prior to the sale is there like a limit of time um that's a really good question and where uh the legality or the likelihood of lawsuits gets gets really tricky of course we would want it as close to time of listing as possible um the through some assessments that uh that we've done with uh some legal review it appears that the closer we get to a time of sale i'm sorry a time of marketing requirement the higher the likelihood is that there will be some legal pushback uh from the community um and so the the goal is to balance that to find a timeline um that would reduce the the amount of legal um pushback with the um efficacy of having it at time of listing that's that's really the most effective time to have it available um but as we've seen it with some other um policies and legislation in the state of michigan our our current legislature tends to put a ban on things that they don't like outright and so we don't want to the reason we want to avoid any sort of legal intervention is because it could turn this whole thing on its head and we might not be able to enforce it at all which isn't a position any of us want to be in um so there isn't a firm timeline yet um but as the the program developed uh fleshes out we would we would work with different timelines and that's the idea of using a pilot is to to to find that process flow and what works easiest for realtors and home buyers during the process do you have a range of number of participating buildings that you would like to include as far as a successful pilot um in my last conversation with walker miller um we we decided that we would try to secure home energy assessments for a hundred buildings which would get us through a couple of months perhaps of of home sales um uh particularly especially if not all realtors are are participating that would get us through more time than that but we don't intend to extend the pilot program much longer than that we don't want the pilot to take a long time are you targeting brokers or are you targeting targeting individual realtors um a little bit above um and there's more to come on that yet but the conversations that we've had right now are um with individual realtors who are looking to champion it at their um at their brokerage among their agency um and there is i mean just before this meeting i got information from one of those realtors about others who he would like to recruit to help participate in this pilot so there's there's some certainly some growing interest in um unfolding and unfolding unleashing a unveiling a pilot program um and [Music] again again it's all it's happening as we speak um uh piecing that together so um i guess we're talking about it for you right now sorry go ahead no i'm just you know i'm listening to everything that you've been saying so far and then this additional detail that you're providing us and i'm listening for perhaps opportunities to compress the timeline in some way uh to you know minimize the you know the cost of of not having something like this in place for the city but thank you so much for providing this information really appreciate it it helps me understand better um in just a quick note of clarification for my benefit yeah you mentioned compress the timeline there were a couple of different timelines that i mentioned i want to make sure that you're talking about the timeline to implementation of a full-fledged program right okay thank you thank you um i i guess i think in your uh slide sack you highlighted as one of the primary concerns it seems like the realtors not being able to translate what they perceive as interest into commitment and follow-through is that kind of a correct way to describe it yeah um it it's it's i think even more than a simple perception of interest um realtors the realtors who i've talked to will say that many of their um the home buyers their clients that they work with will say i'm interested in this if they're asked generally speaking many of the realtors say that this isn't something that's brought up by home buyers i i think there's maybe a chicken and an egg situation going on here is it not being brought up because it's not part of the home buying process yet or is it not part of the home buying product you know what i'm saying um that that perhaps um if once heard is in place it become it introduces that as a talking point among these conversations but that the interest wanes once they start getting down to the details of buying a house um yeah i guess i'd love to understand it maybe not at this time but um in the future what are some of those details that might um you know cause them to wane if it's cost or if it's another factor but i guess my other um thought as you're going through the pilot is um are i imagine that the primary goal is really more about the homeowner the home buyer and the benefits that they can just receive related to efficiency um is the pilot gonna be able to kind of quantify or translate that into you know be able to collect and give examples of how much uh home buyers might be saving or or other ways that we can kind of really make this a little bit more of an appealing and clear connection for folks i mean is that something that's already covered um yeah in terms of the cost to the homeowner uh cost savings for energy efficiency um a lot of that information is would be included in a home energy score so once that's attained by an assessor they have information um on where to leverage their dollars and what would give them the quickest payback and roughly how much those would cost ideally some specifics of the report are regulated by the doe so it has to include certain information there are some participating assessors who will go above and beyond and include some additional information in there and sometimes that includes certain costs but sometimes that's it varies based on location in the country thank you yeah that's helpful i'm just just trying to think through like if there's like a testimonial or something because it seems like that there might just be a a disconnect between like you know the payoff and the benefits the system could provide but thank you so much for that certainly thanks for your questions yeah i just wanted to comment i mean something you said zach made me think about how i i feel like it's very normal when looking for apartments to ask like the landlord or current tenants what the um current like utility bills are and that to me feels something that's like very normalized in in a renting search process um and so like i i do think you know you had said like oh it's hard to know if this is a chicken or the egg problem and people don't know to ask if people would be interested once it becomes normalized i think that is true um so i think for me that's something like i would be interested in because that's something i'm used to asking now when i'm seeking um housing and so i think it is something that maybe once it's normalized it'll become normal it will become more common and something interested and i wonder if part of the framing for people could be like i know you know when people are looking at purchasing homes you get like oh this would be approximately your monthly payment right that includes your mortgage your interest and your taxes right like you know this is about how much it would cost if the framing could be like okay add you know based on this home energy audit score like add to your monthly payment for this home right um and so then i would be thinking about oh my place will cost twelve hundred dollars a month instead of one thousand dollars a month compared to this home right and if it's framed and how it will impact your monthly payment if that would help convince people commissioner cleavy you're muted mark god um we have a patent guild neighborhood association that i'm a part of one of actually one of the founders and stuff and we've been looking at this issue as part of our solarize patent gout project looking at the issue of um you know high performing homes basically homes that have a high energy score um and solar and those that have high energy scores what what difference that makes um and in terms of real estate and you know to the extent that the the association and the neighborhood can position itself as a as a preferred place for a real estate um uh things like that anyway um this led me to hook up with the national realtors association and they in 2021 they published a report this is the national social education of realtors they um published a report called realtors and sustainability report i urge people to take a look at that um there's three i three really important i think findings from that report that might lend themselves to this discussion um first is they quote found that most real estate agents unfortunately don't realize that high performing features actually increase a home's value second of all agents aren't able to recognize high-performing homes and subsequently value it improperly and third most most sellers don't know that high performing features such as home insulation and air sealing are what produces lower cost comfort and warmth in their homes so you know i think that this i appreciate the fact that we're gonna we're gonna go out and try and educate the realtors here we're gonna do a pilot program and all that stuff but ultimately um we we have to get this done so i think you know let's let's uh uh communicate to the city council that we strongly endorse the office of sustainability innovations work in this area and that it is our strong opinion that the city commission city council should um expedite this process as soon as possible and get us to an ordinance um and do what's necessary to get that done and and otherwise we're going to sit here and say oh well we'll just business as usual and sit back and not do anything i appreciate we'd like to have a in some more data but honestly folks there's a ton of data out there including the national real estate association we don't need more data we don't need more stuff we need to push the envelope and if you know the energy commission's uh stating this in public that we think you know energy efficient homes are a good thing you know um well let's do it let's get out there and let's do it so john i support the thing i if you were to put that forward i would certainly vote yes that this should be communicated in whatever form makes sense to the city commission as quickly as possible [Music] um in the interest of time we have one other subject to take up that i'm going to try to deal with quickly um and but i think maybe um it's worth moving on um i don't know that a vote is gonna change a whole lot so i don't think i'm gonna bother to do that i'll just reiterate my point using language of paraphrasing um michael mann and in effect also saul griffith i mean we have arrows in our quiver and we need to be using those arrows this one has been in our air in our quiver for a year and my sense is is that instead of a pilot maybe another thing that we should think about is really deep education and engagement with the realtors because i don't think the pilot's going to tell us a whole lot more but that's just my personal opinion and i leave it to council member briggs and uh missy and others to um hammer this out and to see what we can do i think we we know what what the thoughts are of everybody and now the is how do we move forward as efficiently as possible possible taking into account also things like what commissioner kerber mentioned so um if no one has any objections i'm going to close this topic and move on to the next one which is a resolution that was referred by city council to four commissions if i'm not mistaken and councilmember riggs correct me if i'm wrong it's energy environment transportation and planning so this is a resolution that was penned by council member griswold and co-sponsored by council member haner and um council deferred action uh and asked that uh the four commissions that i mentioned weigh in on this and so um what i thought we would do tonight and not have a long debate on this is at least in a sense read this into the record um and so everybody can have a chance to look at it maybe have a brief discussion of it i sent out a version with um some comments that i had and so um what i would ask missy maybe is to put the original version up and if we can get a vote um or a motion to consider the resolution in a second then we can open it up for discussion and possibly move quickly to my friendly amendments have some quick discussion and then uh potentially vote on it and finalize this at our next meeting but i'm of course open to everybody else's input on the matter council member breaks i realized i probably should open it up for just get into the discussion and then i can say something so for those who haven't read it um basically the resolution name effectively describes um what's um being asked is that it's asking the city to basically engage with the university of michigan and encourage the university of michigan to look into constructing developing 2000 units of workforce housing specifically in this case on north campus and also doing some other things in terms of agreeing on as student population increases together with employment population that there we are moving to the resolve clauses um if there be some kind of formula that the university in the city would try to reach some kind of understanding on that the university would implement so here are the resolved clauses and i'm not going to read these what i'd like first is council member briggs to comment and then i'm going to ask for someone to make a motion with a possible second if people feel comfortable and then open it up go ahead council member breaks yeah so um it's pretty unusual for us to have a commit a resolution that comes to council and then get referred to for four different commissions for feedback so i just kind of want to note that um and it wasn't really necessarily specified at the commission table um what's feedback would be helpful for the sponsors in terms of thinking about how to move this forward there was some some general discussion at the council table about um about some of the you know some of the pieces around this resolved claw some of those elements that are in this kind of our ability to you know how are we coming up with the specific number you know um and some different elements and some of the different pieces that we're asking within the resolve clause but i i guess um you know it's in terms of thinking about the basic premise here is that we're facing an affordable affordability crisis um housing crisis in the city of ann arbor um and we are trying to figure out what we can do on the city's end to um change our housing policies to expedite housing in our community and this is a thought of um you know this is from the from the sponsors this is an idea that you know our partner university of michigan might consider thinking about housing outside of student housing um thinking about workforce housing and how that might play into their um into their goals currently it's important to know that university of michigan doesn't you know like many universities doesn't have this as as part of their um kind of set of goals that they would provide help workforce housing um i think probably there are some some limitations obviously from a private perspective about how we might be able the energy efficiency and what we can require out of that obviously the university has the ability to to really um do a lot more if they were to build housing and to build workforce housing and so um it may be helpful i mean to to go away from this discussion and think about it for a month or something like that and provide some notes and and that even just sending those in to the sponsors of this might be helpful but maybe there's some very specific thoughts that can come out of this as as general feedback from the energy commission as well as to um on this on this matter so that's my basic overview this is not my resolution that i bought for thank you um what i would like to do before we get um additional comments um commissioner peck um is get a motion to at least consider this and possibly a second um if there is no um intention to doing that then of course um we would drop the matter but um can can we get a motion in a second or okay we'll consider it okay okay from commissioner peck and a second from commissioner calvin garcia and i think i saw another hand um so we'll open up for discussion and i'll start with you commissioner overpay yeah um it's funny i would be interested in in knowing why council's being a little tentative here i can imagine that there's a long tradition of uh sort of town and gown difficulty i'm not sure um but i think this could fly uh i think it needs to be strengthened and at least let's consider we shouldn't be building more housing unless it's net um and the university shouldn't be building anything unless it's net zero so um and they know that and they're committed to that already in their carbon neutrality plan they being us so i think we could add that and you could add it in a nice way um i mean it's just this whole thing is just like uh aspirational um but i do think uh the university of michigan is considering some some very visionary changes on our north campus including trying to create some communities of the future and it makes total sense uh in our carbon neutrality plan as well to consider workforce housing um and to re for the same reasons you you know that you have in this resolution which is to reduce the commuting i i think the university is also um thinking of ways uh and what i'm pushing for anyhow is to be more integrated with ann arbor and this is a great way to do that um because it's not just the students it's like you said it's the workforce but it would be students and workforce together um hopefully faculty included were part of the workforce um and i you know i think this will be an easier thing for the university of michigan to uh consider and to embrace than than anyone might be thinking that said uh there's a new president being hired now and just announced today is that process to to try and hire that new pros uh president by summer i think it'd be really smart to have this thing done and already communicated at university of michigan before this summer so that the new president would have would be thinking about this when she or he uh was thinking about whether to come to michigan you know all of us have to really be a little worried that the new president might not be as embracing of carbon neutrality as the previous president was he was very embracing um and we really want to make sure that whoever we hire you know hire for the new president given the size of an uh university of michigan and the importance to ann arbor in terms of everything square footage and carbon neutrality um that that person is up for what we're asking thank you thanks for those insights um other comments missy would you mind showing the version that i sent to everyone and um i won't belabor each and every point um but i'd like to at least call out a couple of points while you're doing that um so these are some suggested changes that i made and i think uh commissioner peck um made a couple of other good suggestions that we would want to consider when we then vote on this i would like to point out that both the a20 plan and the pccn's recommendations called for additional housing to be built in ann arbor in the case of uofm on its periphery which would then apply to north campus so if you can scroll down so there's a few um updated um statistics um in here and i've um footnoted those so you might want to take a look at those um so um some of these are are correct but some of these were a little bit understated so you can see employment is up over 6 000 jobs um i tried to get a in the next clause where it talks about 118 private companies have been launched um 31 in fiscal year 20.

I call this meeting to order. Uh, roll call, please. Brown is here. Dr. Hall here. Mr. Sales here. Mrs. Mrs. Galbreth here. Mrs. Walters here. Vice President RP here. President Albert here.

We find ourselves in the middle of one of these wild shifts. A judge out of Sangaman County has issued an order. Don't be fooled. This case is not about masks. It is about the governor's supreme executive power under article 5 section 8 of the Illinois constitution. That temporary order does not require Cremon school district to change any policy. In fact, even if it did apply to us, it still would not require us to change any policies. I want to thank the district for not subjecting the children the children of our district to a seessaw of ups and downs as a result of a temporary order that does not even apply to us and a case that is continuing through the system and which has already been appealed. It is too disruptive to the learning environment to change a policy every time there's a new temporary order that does not apply to us.

is i just spoke with one of the teachers out there mr uh minihan he was 12 when i started it so what i'll i'll be brief because i think carol's going to talk a little bit more about the program in terms of where we are now but we have a group mentoring program that we started that i started back when i was here after school and it was for those kids that really needed more of a bigger connection in their life and i brought some people in from the community a few teachers and we'd meet after school and we'd do activities there'd be a conversation and um there's always food because it was middle school boys we started off with just a boys program um greg picarello has taken over the boys program and is continuing to rebuild that program right now um but i can tell you just briefly what what i've learned because we we went and established a similar program at clinton and right now i'm running the boys program in mary's carol moosemark whose has a mental connection as well is running the girls program and what we hope to do is to bring a girls program here to toronto that's our intention i'll just say briefly two things what i've learned over the last five years since we started in clinton that it's really about connection it's about connecting these kids with mentors male mentors that come into the male group female mentors that come into our girls group and it's about connecting them with the community because we've done more things in the community we've bought in people from the community we have police officers and we've worked out ways to get two police officers into each of our meetings two two with the girls movement right right now there's one eventually we'd like to have two and teachers because we find that those people are really key people in working with our youth these are we target middle school kids boys and girls right now to start off with those are really key people because they can it gives the boys and the girls a chance to connect with somebody when they connect with a teacher on site here who's in our program it opens up a different world because we become pretty open with our conversation we talk about anything and the other end you know it opens up the door for the kids to talk about things as well um so that key connection is that community we like to expand more here within the community that we have up to this point um you know we probably ask some of the school community people in terms of who you know them but then support us develop relationships we have people from the community come in and talk to our students as part of our after school program we have our after school program go to their place and learn with their own time we'd like to establish those kinds of connections here um the second thing is real it's called a real mentors program and real stands for respect engage acknowledge and listen and those are like those are the tenants with which we operate that's what we try to teach the kids within our meetings that's what we try to uphold within our meetings or outside of our meetings is to help kids learn those skills so they can connect and build relationships with other people and um it's proven really successful kids keep coming back the kids keep going beyond middle school at times it's not for everybody but you have a good group of kids that have continued to come with us um we'd like to expand and bring the girls program here i want to say just a few minute words sure uh my name is mary sarah newsmoore and i was a teacher here at tahanto from 1997 until 2007.

so you have a birth rate that's increasing and you have increased building permits if you look at the birth the number of children born versus k enrollment um you see a different picture that you see in berlin and if you look at the graph you see just look at the trend line if you see the trend line for k enrollment look at the slope of that versus the the the trend line for the number of children born which is which is increasing but the uh enrollment is far upcasing the number of children born so when you look at a trend like that you think to yourself well something's happening there because a lot more students are enrolling in k than being born in the town so it's either that we either want like or something with new construction either renting or they're into the new construction and if you look at the building permits in 2015 there were 23 2019 there were 42 in 2020 21 there were only 10 but if you when you look at what's projected for 2022 that's a different story because there are 63 method units that are going to be put in on the product of seaworld and right across the press technologies and there'll be affordable units and 47 market market rate units there are eight two families going in in the development and there are five to six single families going in so those are all going to equate to more children i mean there's no there's no question that that's going to happen i think i think there are three commercial projects that are also uh going into boylston so maybe that offsets it but when we see this kind of this kind of growth you know bob is ready to go off the roof when you see stuff like that when you think about it we we pay roughly to educate the child you know probably between 18 to 20 000 a year so each of those each of those children um you know they they represented an increase in our budget and that's the real point this is why we do this is one to forecast how much space we're gonna we're gonna need and to figure that out but it's all also for the budget because and i said this at a budget meeting so far and we met with the um with the challenge we have another top meeting coming up as long as the building increases at the pace it is especially with oil stem increases of you know two and a half and three percent become less likely to be met especially when you have increased special input because you just you just have too many kids and like i said each of those kids when you factor in instructional materials when you factor in salaries for teachers you know that's it's roughly twenty thousand dollars for students that's a regular student if it's a student who requires is it out placement you know something like that it could be between 75 and 300 000 and we have all of that range here and they could they could just move in and so you know budgets of you know two two and a half percent they really aren't realistic as long as you continue to build unless you have some kind of something that offsets them and then i just added the haunted numbers in there um again just so you could take a look at them but are there any questions on involvement so one of them is i know that rory you're an appointed member to the master planning community um to what extent do you know that they're having conversations about capacity planning when they consider the master you know i don't know i was actually just thinking that i should send this um to the group because i think it would be extremely helpful for them to have these objections yeah so the other question is [Music] size yeah they still have room i mean they still have some classrooms that aren't being used but um they're getting up there their their average classroom size is it's around 18 now so you know once you you wants to hit that 20 mark and and i know you know i've had classes at 26.

good evening that was a very loud microphone creak wasn't it welcome welcome we'll get started in a couple of minutes i just wanted to give you the two second warning that we'll get started i see a lot of people smiling and greeting each other even through the masks i can see it so welcome and let's have everyone come in and we'll uh we'll begin our program but i'm so thrilled to see you all so just a couple seconds and then we'll we'll get started there are plenty of seeds down in front right this is the all right well i extend to all of you a heartfelt cheshire high school welcome you are now in the home of the rams so we are delighted to see all of you here i'm mary gadd i'm the principal of the high school and i'm going to introduce our administrative team and our head of school counseling in just a moment but i just wanted to let you know um tonight really it should be no pressure you're here to get a sense of what's available to your children as they make this extraordinary transition to high school and as i said to some folks already it goes very quickly not to make you anxious but it does and it's knowing that it's so important to savor your experience here and to take advantage of every opportunity but the last piece is don't try to cram it all into your freshman year you have four years so we'll be talking through our requirements our expectations some of which you will forget as you leave here but what i want you to come away with is a sense of the incredible faculty that is here to support each and every one of you to ensure you have the absolute best experience you can have through your high school years so let me introduce and i also want to extend a welcome to any of our st bridget's bridget families that are here with us this evening welcome to you as well and let me just introduce our administrative team so dr maureen reed she's our assistant principal for curriculum and instruction thank you mrs kristin pells she's one of our assistant principals mr dan tartarelli our other assistant principal and he will be our ninth grade principal so for all of you he is the person that will be in charge of your grade so you'll get to know him through our all of us actually through your first year at high school mr steve trefone who is our athletic director and mr phone and mr tartarelli you may have already met them if you watched the video that we sent you about our activities uh that you can join our clubs and athletics that you can join and if you didn't see that you can take a look and this this evening please feel free to talk to either one of them about all of the things that you can get involved in at the high school and last but absolutely not least is mrs michelle katusi she is our director of school counseling and some of you may have already seen her if she came to visit you at dodd yes all right so you already know her so we're good okay so if we can move forward so tonight i'll just talk to you a little bit about and i'm sure you've already seen this our vision of the graduate you know what that is already many of you already do we'll talk sorry i'm just going to do this so i can see behind me here we'll also talk about our graduation requirements so you understand what the what the pathway is when you get to high school and what you need to do each year to ensure you're on track for graduation what the course offerings are and there are a lot of requirements the mastery-based performance assessment which is another requirement don't worry we'll talk you through it and then you'll learn from after our little session you will all head upstairs so you'll be if if you can look behind you see those kids in the greens t-shirts there wave please thank you these are our link crew leaders and it's a wonderful program there that is the crew that's going to be working with you as you transition to high school they're going to be working with you in freshman orientation and tonight they will help you to find your way up to the second floor down the business hallway and into all of the areas where we have our academic department heads and teachers ready to talk with you about all of our programs so they'll be able to answer a ton of your questions tonight and you'll get to meet some teachers okay so if you just take a look at our vision of the graduate and look at the language that's bolded in red right we want you to be first of all lifelong learners if you're a lifelong learner you're excited about what's in front of you and you remain curious and that is exactly how we shape our global society both locally in the state and brought more broadly than that and we want you to develop those skills and knowledge to become really engaged learners and to start to figure out what you love and your path forward we also know that you need to complete the content of each course that's vitally important so that you really get a solid foundation and last but not least apply what you know in the real world we have internship offerings as you get a little bit older in your high school experience and ways for you to connect with interests and experiences outside of the high school and these are our performance standards how many of you have seen these before yeah okay our cheshire performance standards this is what we want you to cultivate right to be a complex thinker to really be able to analyze right to be a creative thinker creative problem solving to be self-directed that means to be able to take some initiative when you're doing your work when you're learning in your class raising that hand taking a little bit of a risk and participating we want you to communicate effectively we want you to be a cooperative learner that means to be able to work with your peers in a collaborative and cooperative way to learn from and with each other and then finally to contribute to our community both our school community and the larger community [Music] so i am going to hand the microphone over to mrs katusi and she's going to talk you through the credits at cheshire high school hello welcome um so these are the the state graduation requirements if you look at the column that's on the left is kind of how the state specified it and then on the right it talks about what that looks like at cheshire high school so the one class um or so it's divided into the humanities the one class in humanities that you have four credits so you have to take all four years of high school is english and then it divides out in the other humanities areas three credits in social studies which includes a credit in world history and at least a half credit in a civics course one credit in fine arts and one humanity elective so in that there's a hard copy of the program of studies which has all of the courses listed that we um offer at cheshire high school not just for ninth grade but for all four years of high school students got a hard copy of that at dodd when i go over to st bridget they'll get a hard copy as well and then it's available online but these state requirements cheshire requirements are in the program of studies and then when it comes down to that humanities elective and then you'll see there's a stem elective what qualifies in those categories is listed in there as well i believe it's on page 15 and 16.

so that's dependent on where you are in your coursework at dodd and then physical education of course and your elective choice that will work in your schedule and so you'll work very closely with your school counselor to ensure you have all of your requirements obviously but then that we can fit in some of those courses that you're excited about trying out in the elective world okay so incoming students like we already said you received a hard copy of the program of studies and many of you have already received a one page of page three there were a few little errors in the page numbers in our hard copy so that single page and our link crew leaders have it those are the corrected page numbers for each of the sections in the course guide so you can just slip that in and it will be corrected online after after this evening okay i think we've covered it so supports you come to the high school it's a big place what do you do if you're struggling a little bit in a class these supports are designed to be available in every department area is often if not every period through the day some of these supports are scheduled and some of these supports are what we call drop-in support so there's a live link to the student portal which we don't need to link to this is going to be sent out to all of you following this presentation but our student portal if you're looking at looking for a drop for drop in support say you just need a little bit of help with your with conjugating verbs in your world language class you would fill out a form and say what you were struggling with in the period you had free and you can go and get some assistance so if we flip to the next slide we also have something called learning lab support so we have departmental course specific support or department specific support we have learning lab support which if you're struggling to organize you have six and a half credits you have a paper due on thursday you have a test the following monday oh my gosh how do i organize myself to study we can help you with that and that's what learning lab is for for some executive functioning and organizational support i see some heads nodding you can drop in and some students you can be assigned as well we also have math support you can drop in every period and if you're stuck on a sunday night trying to get that homework done we have online support that you can tune into write your questions and a teacher will get on live and help you out next slide we also have some supports that can be scheduled so if you really are struggling with certain concepts that are foundational for a course you can be assigned into any of these areas for support math workshop reading writing and structured study hall it would be a more consistent place to go to get that support and the next slide and these are all the course specific areas where we provide teacher support from certified teachers throughout the school day okay and now we will turn it over to dr reed who's going to talk about the mastery-based performance assessment welcome to the high school it's really nice to have you all with us tonight so the mastery-based performance assessment is a graduation requirement per the state of connecticut which actually began with the current juniors the class of 2023 so you'll be the third or fourth class that will be working on this so it's a pass fail credit it's only one credit that's required to graduate the experience is completed either junior or senior year there um are it's reflective of the chs performance standards through a rubric it will be assessed and all experiences have include a student present presentation the students presenting and a reflection piece afterward there is a manual that you'll receive the beginning of freshman year it'll be emailed to parents and students so that you'll all be aware and throughout the years through advisory we will work to kind of help you come to the realization of what project you want to do and there are many paths that you can choose to do an independent project there's an ap capstone course you can take in your junior year and then we just added ap seminar class senior year or you could do it through activities that you participate in extracurricular sports clubs so there's many different options for you to fulfill the project and we're really excited to see what comes out this year and into next year with our first group that's doing it and then for future years for you just passing it on thank you and so you can see with the mastery based project we not only want you to learn in each of your courses but we want you to think about what really interests you and how you might want to go a little bit further to demonstrate that that's that that's the key of that mastery-based performance assessment and here are some of the ways in which you can engage with other with your peers and with other folks at the high school through our extracurriculars and activities i have to say i defy any new student walking through these doors not to find at least one club that is of some interest to you we have so many and if a student decides you know what there really isn't anything that i like we have kids who start clubs themselves so it's wide open for you to find avenues of expression and ways to really connect with your peers and with the faculty and staff at cheshire high school in the letter that we sent home to you you received these links that indicate what the pathways are for each of our course areas so i just wanted to re-show that that's in your letter and it will be sent to you as well through this presentation and last but not least what is in your near future mrs pells is going to come up and talk a little bit about the next steps for all of you to get even further acquainted with cheshire high school after this evening good evening everybody so we have a very intentional transition program which helps at all our freshmen transition to the high school so the first one is checked because that's curriculum night and this is that's tonight and you're here you're where you need to be tonight tonight we won't be doing tours of the building today is just about the curriculum areas but the eighth graders will be welcome to come back in the spring in april you'll be coming over here if you're a dot it's divided by teams and if you're at other schools you're welcome to join us on those particular days which are getting scheduled and so first you listen to a panel who that is made up of our peer advocates some of our student leaders who talk about different um aspects of being at the high school and things you want to be prepared for and know before you walk in the doors and then you divide up into small groups for some tours of the building so you'll get to see all the areas and you'll be able to ask our student leaders questions about anything you want that has to do with the high school and then the most important day your actual first day is our freshman orientation day with link crew which is scheduled for wednesday august 24th and it runs from 7 45 to 1 o'clock bus transportation is provided so you get to practice the bus being at your bus stop if you take the bus the ride in it's a very high energy day it's a very it's an extremely fun day led by our link crew and so we start off in large groups you meet a lot of different people who will be here at the high school then you break off into small groups in your advisory groups and you get to know um you get to spend some time knowing each other in those small groups you practice the building you'll go on several different walks around the building you'll get to navigate the lunchrooms find out where your lockers are practice your schedule a lot of um we'll have some fun games and activities so it's a really exciting day so we want everybody to be there in preparation for the for the real first day of school which happens in the next week um so we look forward to having you experience all these these events and then even in august if you're inclined to want to come into the school you're more than welcome to come in and take a walk around before school starts okay look out for the link leaders because as you leave here if you're going to go out these doors and hit the stairs to go upstairs our link leaders will give you guys directions also okay and you'll be able to meet with different departments in three locations on the second floor so we thank you on behalf of the administrative team and our faculty and staff at the high school welcome we are so excited to have you i love it that we're in person hooray and i hope you enjoy your evening and thank you for coming [Applause]

good evening um welcome to the board of education uh policy subcommittee it is uh i believe february 8th at 6 30 p.m um uh miss jacinsky uh the roll call please yes let's see mr grippo here mr white here mr rosenberg mr chairman you have a quorum great thank you um i'll rise for the pledge i don't know mr sullivan were you ready with a flag i am oh fantastic somewhere here this i'm gonna wait though i'll wait i i think we finished by the time we got the flag up last night no pressure of course okay i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] okay you know dr sullin um with if the governor's executive orders expire at the end of this month right 15 then on the oh on the 15th so we can't hold these meetings anymore after the 15th i mean virtually that's a really good question that i'm not sure i will look into that very good question as i we were working on some policies last year thinking oh well we're probably not going to need them and you know all that kind of stuff and here we are and you know sometimes subcommittee meetings are better this way because you record everything you know the audio is better for your presentation kind of works out better so i guess maybe we'll have to add that's the agenda for next month i guess yeah it's a good question we'll look into it yeah okay um so for this evening um um i guess we'll begin with a public comment does there any public comment on any policy uh on the agenda that we are going to be reviewing this evening no sir okay and i guess we'll go to the uh first revised policy now so my understanding are these all um legislative changes that we're reviewing this evening right they're all driven by um legislation okay great well then i guess i'll uh hand the meeting over to you all right so the first uh policy on the agenda is one one zero one uh a it is communications with the public the original um the last time it was updated was 1997 and i'd like to think that our communications have dramatically evolved since that time you can see in the policy some of the uh changes that were made number three here that was redlined basically is still relevant it's just addressed further down and so what you see here in the the gray highlighted much of that is driven from actually nine down is legislatively driven uh number eight we just updated for uh well now excuse me that's legislatively driven too um it's stuff that i mean obviously we've offered conferences multiple times a year you know certainly since you know after 1997 but what's really different is that it really addresses these periods of remote learning which at this point is moot but it's in the law even though remote learning isn't allowed by law yet so um i don't know i guess this is a preemptive and we're required to have it in our policy as i said even though it's not in the law yet um okay um is there any comment on uh this policy revision mr white i think you're muted uh with regard to drop-in hours and home visits number eight is that like for special ed or or special situations so uh communication a home in school regular two-way meaningful communication and it it outlines a variety of strategies so options okay drop in hours for parents not requirement but it's um a variety of options okay no that's fine i mean because i know we have the parent teacher conferences at least twice a year i think it's october and march yeah that's all i was wondering about yeah and also the the at-home visit struck me as time consuming to say the least no and i can i can see situations working yeah it's very rare yeah okay yeah door-to-door administration is ultra time consuming i guess it's good that it sort of codifies a remote meeting because i don't know if that was there before you know i don't know if it was necessary um but to have a teacher conference you know via google meet or something like that you know that is one of the silver linings you know adam you open talking about the benefits of the remote meeting i know tim you've been a proponent of that in terms of flexibility for board members and public participation and so there are some silver linings from the pandemic and the remote conference is definitely one of them um wanna move on to number two yeah uh uh do we have to oh yeah we don't have to do anything yet right okay they're all first yeah yeah okay so the second one i feel like this is a deja vu moment for us adam because you and i have talked about this on numerous occasions the graduation requirements oh again here we are again yes uh definitely a deja vu moment and i want to get down to really the new language um and it's reflective of the school student success plans uh the honor after july 2022 the um success plan shall to the extent that it doesn't conflict with career choices including academic planets compliance with the board's challenging curriculum policy so basically student success plans are something we start sixth seventh grade with students they go through career exposure and choices to give them interest inventories and we use that ultimately as students enter and matriculate through high school to be able to [Music] select coursework and maybe at some point college interests but um basically this is saying that it should the student success plan should kind of correlate with graduation requirements and um that's you know the part that mr zinski there is is highlighting um and so i mean that's pretty straightforward but it's required by law um and then uh this was just an error that we saw in the policy where it said that graduation date this is recent change in law the graduation date for students and grades can be 180 days from the first day school so what that allows a district to do is if they wanted to set the graduation date on a friday let's say on the 181st days or the 180th day of school if we had multiple snow days that carried the school year into next week you could still have the seniors graduate on that day i think it's great in theory in practice it's really difficult to say all right this is going to be your graduation day even though we have five snow days well then you have to really reconfigure final exams and everything else it makes it uh really challenging so what we've been doing this year with the three snow days we've had is just add days on to the end of the year and we'll set the date to give enough time to reasonably plan and if there's a flukey storm or something that closes school we'd still hold it on that day that we planned but we don't have to worry about the possibility of it being four days or something like that um so with the 88th day does that mean i'm sorry yes 188th day so does that mean zero because we're required by law in the if not 88 correct it's a little confusing because the student calendar we're required to have 180 days of school that could be half days whatever just contact days teachers however in their contract have 185 days so they work the five days where we don't have kids you know a few days before a day after the year and some professional development in the middle so it's the one one eight zero one hundred eightieth day yeah from the first day absolutely gotcha gotcha okay so those are pretty simple changes but there are changes so we we have to bring it forward um the uh i guess uh comment i had is so when it's listing um career and academic choices is this um language that we put in of course this is the legislative language this is the legislative language that's more like a stem language and then uh yeah so the student success plans um when the students are developing them usually with a school counselor um you can't select a whole bunch of courses that have nothing to do with the the curriculum policy [Music] you can't say well i'm gonna take four cat uh classes in petting cats well yeah that's great but that's not gonna help you graduate you know um i use an intentionally absurd example there to drive home the point but you can't you have to have coursework and experiences that align and allow you to graduate oh sorry so it's aligned to the core curriculum then well allowing to graduation requirements okay because i was thinking specifically about perhaps adding in uh the word trades or or manufacturing and i wasn't sure if that's yeah that that is a cor that path which we have uh pathways for trade work in in our schools that is matriculating you toward graduation so that would comply so do we need to list that or is that this is like um uh not excluding or i forgot what's the the legal legalese not inclusive or right yeah it's it's not i mean there's not exclusionary language in here okay um so you know anything that supports the matriculation toward uh graduation is acceptable and i wouldn't wanna um single items out for fear of excluding other items you know just being open anything that helps you get to graduation that's part that can be part of your plan got you okay tim any comment yeah no thank you uh well thanks for clarifying that because i was wondering about it it's i actually it doesn't make me really comfortable when it just like singles that out it kind of steers kids in that direction and i get it it's stem i think there's probably you know good job opportunities in those fields but it's still it's like go do these don't think about the other stuff anyway um i do have a question on this topic although it's not what we're discussing right now and i didn't read through that i didn't see it in the policy um do we have anything that requires four years of attendance or do we just have the 22 credit rule in order to graduate it's uh just based on it and i okay good i say that just for anybody who might be watching it for you too jeff just understand um i'm not a believer that every student needs to be in high school for four years and if somebody was done with everything in three and a half and it was the right situation for that student i'd be perfectly comfortable with the student graduating at that time i think a lot of students probably four years is is good but not necessarily all so i'm glad that we don't have a four year requirement in there and it's just the credits get the credits then you can be done yeah it's a rare bird but we've done it yeah good no and yeah i'm not saying it's common by any means but i could i could definitely see the situation where it it could be the the best option for students that's that's all for me awesome thank you is that like the kid genius clause it's honestly it's it's not it's that's not my thinking i actually was i actually was sort of like pushing it about 20 years ago when i was still on that when i was on the council but um one of the people who came to the meeting back then was jerry brittingham and he kind of agreed with me at least to you know the former board chair he kind of agreed with me at least to the extent that he didn't go into college not every student does he went in the military and it's just i i just i i don't like the idea and i you know i hear it from people sometimes where it's four years of high school and then go to college and i think that's great for a lot but there are other pathways to your life to success so that's all i was thinking and it's not it's not just it's not just the g yes it could be anybody well that that would also open if um like if a student didn't make it to graduation they dropped out or or whatever you know life got in the way so that's if they came back for their ged it's that sort of lays out that for that requirement for adult education correct yeah yeah certainly pick up those core content areas uh ged is a little bit of a different angle but you would okay um take whatever credits were accrued and you're right pick up there there's also something called the credit diploma program which is a more traditional pathway adam like you're talking about ged is a little bit different in terms of just being exam based uh in preparation for passing that exam gotcha but the credit also program would be exactly what you're talking about well so you don't necessarily have to take courses to get your your diploma you just have to pass an exam that's but okay yeah you know i i don't consider myself a ged expert but as i understand it you once you reach a certain age you can take the exam okay gotcha um all right i guess um are there any other questions tim no i'm good sure sam is probably amassing her questions for the end i'm guessing um all right jeff let's continue on okay so the next item is uh grading systems in the law required information on weighted grades uh and we did have information in our policy already around weighted grades and everything that's highlighted there is required um a lot of it was in our handbook or mixture of policy we're just calling it out specifically as the um the law required okay obviously when kids enroll um you know i actually am just finishing up that process with my own son it's crystal clear uh certainly in cheshire's handbook and in powerschool what classes the weighting of those classes etc that you're enrolling in so we do make that clear in a number of areas for students and families in the in like i said power school and in the handbook in the course selection guide so it's already there so in instance we did not specifically say we were in favor of weighted grading in our policy exactly yeah this this would be validating that that you're so what a weighted grading protocol takes courses that are more rigorous let's say ece or ap courses and gives them a higher grade point average for the purpose of uh you know gpa calculation so you'll have a weighted grade calculation just recognizes those courses that are harder right okay tim yeah so i haven't i have not been involved in this discussion before my kids aren't there yet and this far i don't know i don't think we had it when i graduated in 1990 what are the so what what are the um drawbacks to the weighted grading what's the counter argument to it i mean because to me on the surface it sounds good but i'm sure there's got to be some drawbacks to it right sure so um you could hear that it's not necessarily fair that a student who has a greater capacity gets a benefit of taking a more rigorous course but generally speaking across connecticut it's adopted practice as a matter of fact i don't know of a school system that doesn't have any weighted grading um it incentivizes students to take more rigorous coursework and therefore we see it is is beneficial um and it does support the like i said the gpa when you do do that okay is it now and also is this something you said we're we're required to put this in by state law or the counter the weighted average is required by state law i thought when we started the meeting you said all these basically were driven by yeah this is this is a statutory change to include this in your in your policy language okay so to we have to include the language assuming we have weighted grades but if the board chose to not have it that's an option and then there would this would not exist correct the law just says if you have it you need to have in the policy right okay all right okay i mean you just have to be clear about it and this is this is a first reading right yes yeah okay yeah you know what i'll do for the next reading is get you guys the you know kind of the courses that i'll show you through our handbook how it's outlined yeah i mean i'm comfortable with this it just kind of strikes me that as when we started talking about it that there would be some people who would be uh not in favor of it i'm not saying myself but i just want to know yeah i guess the potential exists so yeah when we come back next time i'll i'll pull you the classes and uh give you some more information on it okay yeah i'm comfortable moving forward that at this point yeah first reading okay um okay next policy this one's gonna feel eerily familiar as well seeing as we just uh worked on this i don't get the date i think it was just last year yeah oh yeah yeah june 3rd 2021.

so a lot of the old language was stricken and the state tightened it up to just this language here okay uh going back to the um first section on birth the three um there's revised and have the right to have such recommendation made so that to have to have the right does that is that part of the uh legislation yes okay it's usually you know right that's like a that's a strong word so if you have a right for something just for something they have the right to make a recommendation uh anybody can make a recommendation not anybody but the people involved in the planning and placement team meeting can make recommendations um even you know we'll have outside therapists or evaluators make recommendations and we can we the team then gives that recommendation due weight and incorporates it into the development of the plan what it's saying here and i think was the case in other communities perhaps that don't have birth to three the birth to three person was kind of being excluded from the ppt meetings and this is requiring districts to bring that person to the table again not so much a cheshire issue because they're our employees we're holding the ppt at the early intervention center so it's it's kind of a moot point for us this has been part of our practice you know as long as darcy school has been around but for other communities that may not necessarily follow this okay tim any comment no that's good okay okay and uh last item today is another you know statutory update uh oh uh jeff i have actually uh are we were you moving on from from 61-59 yeah is that or is that okay i actually i had one more question i'm sorry um at the end i made it down to the end where it's talking about um a student in a technical education or career school um so can you just explain that that process and and why is is this new to require a ppt or or maybe you could explain that process a little bit absolutely so the ppt itself is not a requirement within special education if your child is identified within special education you must have on an annual basis a review of that child's plan you review the goals the objectives in that plan and progress being made toward those goals in that process now at the age of 14 you have to consider transition goals for that child that could mean could mean high school programming goals maybe the child wants to be an author so we're going to consider that in the formulation of our goals in course selection for that child maybe the child wants to go to a trade school or something like that then you can you know formulate goals around those that transition plan but starting at the age of 14 every year when you review that child's plan unless they're exited you have to incorporate those transition goals skills that will support that child's growth toward whatever that goal may be does that make sense yeah and so i i think maybe that's misunderstanding i i want the way i read it um because i guess i didn't read the paragraph before it and i was reading as if anyone who wanted to any student who wanted to enter a technical a school or a trade school like that they would have to have a ppt done before they they left and i was like that that felt pains right so it's only if they were in special education already yeah okay okay all right that makes more sense okay okay so the i'm good the last item then is um regarding the fafsa this would be a new policy that the state is adopting um we do a lot within the high school guidance department as sam could probably tell you to support students that are interested in seeking federal aid as a matter of fact we were acknowledged by the state last year for the high completion rate that we have for the fafsa the fafsa is an application that students that are looking for state finance or federal financial aid when they enroll in college need to fill out and then you know you get feedback then about whether or not you're eligible for financial aid so our district actually is on the state department of ed on a roll for districts that have the highest completion rates for the fafsa form so it's something that we do pretty well already and this is just what they're trying to do at the state level is really drive fafsa uh incompletion so you know again for us a lot like the the birth to three inclusion it's something that we're already warmly embracing and it's really part of our practice already so this isn't really going to impact us at all yeah i definitely agree dr solomon i mean you know there's so much intensive support in ensuring that students along the way receive the guidance so that the completion rate is at 100 so we we've had a lot of success with this and i i definitely agree that the state is trying to codify this across the board um uh for me um i guess i'm just slightly confused as to the purpose of making it a policy if it's something that we in that we do already and that are successful in is there is it just this is again i saw the statutory reference at the bottom it's just because statutory reference status that's totally required right so at least they're telling us we have to do something we already do yeah that yeah at least that's good i think faker would be happy about that yeah that this is not a mandate that she'll disagree with right now and we're not reinventing the wheel because we already invented the wheel so i i am i am curious about it jeff um so fafsa i know what it is it's not just college it's also graduate school because i only graduated 2015 and i'm still paying my fafsa loans um it looks like adam is too yep um is the does this actually have a target rate of a hundred percent of graduating students no there's not a target rating okay uh for a hundred percent because clearly a 100 of our kids don't go to college and i'd be shy you'd have to have a really small district uh where that's the case but uh it's you know basically we want to do as well as we can with students who are looking to attend a college you know have that experience so no i think that i think that's great for the students who college is right for them when they're leaving high school i think it's great i think the financial awareness and um because you know there's there's you know there's people out there who'll take advantage and uh you know give you a give you a loan not too many questions asked with a 25 interest rate and it just and people get killed get absolutely hammered it's i mean it's a real problem that exists in the us and whatever we can do to minimize that with what you're already doing i think that's great it's just it's what you said this is for students who are going on to college it's not for it's not necessarily for every student though so thank you for that yeah so you know i just looked up real quick um that i knew that we i thought it was last year that we were acknowledged i actually sent the board a letter on september 17th of this year that the state has recognized chs for their rapid growth and fafsa application completion gives our students and their families access to greater financial aid opportunities as they head to college [Music] also acknowledging the fact that we see hsr graduates have a very high persistence rate meaning once you go to college um you you stay there that we do a great job with our kids to allow them to continue you know they have the skills to matriculate on so um that's kind of where we are um okay um mrs rosenberg did you have any questions or comments on the other policies i know you'd i hopped on no i did peruse them earlier on before the meeting and i think we're pretty much you know again the language is pretty clear on the other ones um so i no i didn't thank you though okay um so jeff i according to the agenda looks like uh that's it yes all right so uh we need a motion for a first reading would that be correct yes okay um mrs rosenberg motion seconds okay all right well um how about this i'll uh i'll do the uh i'll make the motion um because i think we have to i have to read it specifically so um i move that uh policies uh 1101.1 community relations instruction graduation requirements 61 46.1 instruction grading systems 6159 instruction individ individualized education program and sixth in policy number 6148 instruction uh fafsa completion program uh be moved uh to the board to the board of education for a first reading so now a second second oh sorry okay i'm gonna give sam the second because she was trying to read it before all right so sam has sex thank you you're very kind is there is there any uh is there any uh discussion on the motion seeing none all in favor aye it is unanimous fantastic can i ask a question do oh yeah do we have anything on policy agenda not tonight but anything else out there that's that we had read at least once or twice before i thought there was at least one thing no nothing out there okay yeah nothing outstanding okay okay and then just a comment to sam i'm not sure if you heard the part of the meeting but when we kicked it off we were slightly off topic off agenda but it was relevant i think remote meetings may actually go the way of the dodo when the executive order does so jeff's going to look into that to see where that stands uh in in past meetings uh i'm not sure you may have seen meetings in the past but one thing that's been uh i think it would be valuable to have continued remote meetings particularly for committee meetings where generally you don't have a lot of people turn out and we can also get it on video so people can see it after the fact right it just gives more i agree it gives more access to those that you know have either passing by you know transportation and i used to get stuck in traffic sometimes so um i think appointments or whatever the case may be right well i have another screen with the other uh meeting on so this gives me the opportunity to play double agent right now yeah now the other yeah the other thing that crossed my mind in doing a remote meetings is if just you know one or two night fewer nights out per month and you might have a different pool of people who want to run for office even right i think i think it's valuable if we can continue it but we'll find out and uh jeff if i recall we do have some draft uh policy on this if i you because we reviewed it last year i think yeah and we tabled it so um we do have some stuff to kind of build on so yeah if it looks like we can continue on then uh i would definitely like to maybe put on the agenda for next month so we could start reviewing it again and see where we are absolutely okay um [Music] all right so there is no other items on this agenda i would like to entertain a motion to adjourn okay tim so moved uh sam second great all in favor aye all right it is unanimous we are adjourned thank you everyone good night everyone

toward the committee i'm sorry we left the committee with a number of budget lines that were going to result in i'm sorry we left the board with the finance committee with the number of budget drivers that were going to impact several different lines in our annual budget and so i wanted to find an opportunity this evening for um for the finance committee having an opportunity to do a little deeper dive into those budget drivers whether it's enrollment whether it's state mandates stand mandated programming or you know transportation or facilities i wanted to have an opportunity for number one my team to present out a little deeply on those areas provide an opportunity for feedback for the committee so that going into tomorrow night any questions that you might have about any of these budget drivers are answered and so um we have a presentation you'll note um and kate i believe you had asked the question you know why is it that tonight's powerpoint are it's absent of some slides that were shared um previously and that is because i'm sorry can you hear me okay it just came back thanks okay and and that is because we we want to focus on the budget drivers and so this evening so we don't overwhelm the committee with 50-plus slides we just wanted to go straight to the budget drivers himself remind the committee of of course the ask of 6.2 increase an 8.7 million operating budget and then speak to the respective budget drivers that i had opened with um and so the team is going to walk you through in a little bit more detail why we why this ask is coming to bring been brought to your attention this evening and then i'm going to wrap up with the summary uh for the committee and so we're going to start off with and mike if you can share the powerpoint we will start off i think appropriately with the finance department's office and they will walk you through the hard copy book that you received and so there's the 8.7 million just as a reminder in a total of 6.2 percent of the proposed budget for this year we can go to the next live mic and then um just an update for the board um you should have seen this in your packet i'm sorry you this was shared in your packet uh for tomorrow night's meeting and it is actually an amount of 152 million which is reflective of the 12.8 overall that we're asking however we are proposing that we utilize an increase of eight seven in the local budget three million dollars from reserves and then 1.1 from esser and other grants and that's how we're looking to mitigate the overall ask of 12 points 12.8 million actually um and so john's going to give a little bit detail from this and i believe there's a link in there that might compress and you'll see it right here john [Music] thank you kevin um so what um what we just what i thought we'd do tonight is uh i just replicated a few of the pages from your budget book some i think are more informative than others and i'm just going to highlight what they're trying to convey the this should look kind of familiar to you you see it each month in the monthly report those are our categories of spending the difference here as we present our budget is we've uh shown you what our budget uh was for the same things last year you see that very first column and then uh what we actually spent uh compared to the budget last year and then as you go over uh what we're proposing for what was proposed and adopted this year and what um we're talking about for next year um so um mike if you want to go to the next page um so um this is the media your budget book is really the the different line items and in the details section you'll see four or five pages you'll see 120 different line items that explain our whole proposal this one is salaries that they follow the same order as the summary uh but in that we break down that salary number you can see things uh like teachers there obviously that's the biggest one of 46 million dollars but how much we paying for nurses custodians things like that if you go to the next page there's some more substitute teachers esy especially that's the special ed summer school so any of the individual uh line items are right there and again we're showing last year budget actual this year the budget and next year the budget and we want to repeat that in in your budget book for different categories this is benefits and um you you and when you drill into that you see it's going up a million nine that's that's six point six percent uh we talk about but um it's made up of really six different components you can see health insurance and dental there um we've done a really close look at uh everything this year so you can see some of those uh actually coming down based on our analysis and a lot of that is using the new computer system and uh really providing a much uh more exact way of predicting those expenses um and then what what follows uh we've talked about these different categories of professional services that's where our uh tutors are you can see that line right across the middle there four and a half million dollars but but other professional services like there are times when we need attorneys to help us you'll see down at the bottom there the um occupational therapists and physical therapists that kind of thing but uh all of those lines and and these uh categories are the cat the categories we use are the same ones the state uses for year-end reporting that's how they want uh school districts to capture their expenses so we're we're complying with that a couple of the others i'll just mention purchase services that's uh really to keep our buildings running you can see uh the different monies we budget for repairs or contracts on our computers or elevators boilers and that kind of thing refuse removal is in there um so again that's a category the state says if you're doing these things uh put them in that group here's another one contracted services you'll find our tuitions you'll find some of the drivers there we talked about this tuition for out of district special education youngsters is there our insurances uh through kerma uh public liability that includes um all of our coverages that we get along with the city transportation you'll hear a little bit more in the presentations tonight about that line and what makes it up a couple more supplies and materials interesting there electricity you wouldn't often think of that as a supply but that's how they want to see it that's that's the biggest one of all uh propane is big but also here um instructional supplies those are all the things your teachers use in the classrooms and things that are disposable uh each year if i could use the word but this category uh this is the big one this is what you're gonna hear the most about tonight in previous budgets it was where we put equipment and you'll see it there um mostly that's uh computer equipment and it's it's about the same next year as as this year but this is where we've identified the three improvements uh that you're going to hear about i needed a place to put them so we could isolate them so we could see them so everyone would know exactly how much they are and where but the facilities improvements the instructional improvements uh which includes both our english language arts uh improvement and the after school programs is in that number and then the enrollment uh impact and what that's going to do to the staff i have to say again those three items uh make up three percent of the increase meaning um that 8.7 that we talked about is going up 7.5 percent but these three things are three of the 7.5 so you really could say without these things our our year to year budget is going up 4.5 so i think that's a very important message to carry uh there's one more chart uh coming up that one you you see every year it's uh some miscellaneous things um and then just a word um we didn't put it up about your budget books uh that you got today um the topics in those books are all the same as as we've uh given you historically every year some of them are exactly the same the pie charts you'll recognize some of the other charts on state aid and things like that are are the same a couple of the others we tried to give you what i think is a clearer view of those same areas i'll mention them uh briefly um you we we talked last week about the about comparing our pupil spending to other uh cities and towns and who that should be and why and what it means um what you'll see in your book is a a list of all 169 connecticut cities and towns you can we can pick whatever ones we'd like but you'll see everyone and how the calculation is made what their spending is how many pupils and and then the spending per pupil so that's a little different look in previous years you had some of the dergs highlighted now this year you have all of them so that that's one change that's on page 12.

does that include aids the a school and region endeavor programs also in that number are they separate it does it does include it mr russo okay thank you all right um facilities so i'm gonna walk through there's about 12 different items here and i'll just give a very high level overview of what each of these is um at ais there needs to be an exterior staircase installed um currently there's no way for medical personnel to get from one level of the school to the other without going through the building so that's something we have to put in just for safety purposes at the high school there's a life skills classroom that was recently installed and needs to be finished up there is also at the high school a high priority safety issue around chemical removal and a tank in the outside underground parking lot that we have to remove there's a new work system coming in school dude where people will file their tickets and we'll be able to track the progress and close tickets out once things are done and that should smooth a lot of the back and forth between facilities and teachers and principals that just want to get things done at their in their school um new box truck and new maintenance truck the current box truck uh is a retired food truck um and it's showing a lot of signs of rot um and our telecom technician currently has no vehicle we have a few people that are using personal vehicles so this would be a step in the direction of getting uh essential personnel where they need to go um at king street there's a special ed room um we need to add some offices for privacy um questions around uh you know privacy for special students that have special needs around changing clothes things like that um currently this is something we need to do to just give that to the students and teachers there and at the high school there is another special ed room that is currently open and there's a need for some offices so people can have more private conversations on discrete issues um at beaverbrook we are in need of some new doors there's some severe rot in the doors and frames um and at king street primary we need to install some partitions there's some open classroom concept there that is very distracting for students and for teachers and at the intermediate school we have not completed the flooring changes hallways were redone about five years ago the classrooms have older tiles that's just about bringing everything up to consistency i'm at prembrook there's some flooring issues as well there's some classrooms that are are half hard floor half carpeting especially in special ed classes we want to remove carpeting it's not a great option it's very hard to clean disinfect things like that so this is really a safety concern that we want to address and at south street there's several areas that have buckled on the floor and heaved in the floor i'm not sure what the correct term is uh but we need to repair that so all told we're looking at about 530 000 um and these are really essential repairs there's there's not a lot of wow and flutter in here this is just just things we need to make sure the schools are are running people have the space they need to do their job thank you my transportation don sure can i'm sorry to interrupt can i can i just ask a quick question um and i i saw that somebody responded on the question sheet about this um mike the the information you just gave us put it at 530 000 for facilities um and i'm just looking at the the budget driver page i don't know if that just wasn't updated um but it's got other items which includes facilities security and supplies at 370k let me take a look at that and get back to you we may have combined uh security may have gone into a different line um i'll have to look at that and get back to you okay thank you actually can i just follow up with one question to michael on that last section sure um a stairwell at ais that building is not even not even 20 or 25 years old why why why do we have to build stairwells to accommodate things that we didn't have to do when the brand new building was built less than 20 years ago yeah so joe did this for a hundred thousand dollars right so joe the issue is um what we have found um in and the board might recall when we had an incident on the campus um at um western a couple of years ago um and i believe there was a concern about someone carrying a weapon it turned out to be an umbrella right that's right that's right and we had to remember that right and then we had to go into lockdown and they we also had an incident more recently at the school as well but what we are continuing to find is um you know we have two separate entrances at the school um and the building cannot be unified in any way during emergent situations and so we had one incident and i don't recall the emergency at that time but when families went to go pick up their children we can't move students from one side of the building to the other so it creates tremendous chaos for us um recently we had an emergency response visit the building for another walk-through of course this is not the first time emergency response has visited the building and i'm not just talking about matt becky's office um during our schools we have the entire you know we have representatives from various offices of the city do a walk through our schools um and so they recommend it strongly that we um look into installing some type of exterior staircase to make sure these two these two these two sides of the school can be joined and emerged in the event of an emergency okay so this isn't co this isn't code this is practical that's right that's right okay thank you yeah you're welcome i i have a question about the box truck a new maintenance truck um you said that the current uh folks are using their personal cars do they get reimbursed for truck mileage travel that sort of thing you know in the interim they do okay yeah but we still don't like to have them do it you know i understand all right yep transportation um you want to put this light up mike right so there'll be two slides on busing uh the next slide is special ed but but these two sections are connected i'll explain in a minute um so to build the transportation budget for next year we took a snapshot of what we were doing in late january and then said if we do the same thing in september what would it cost so this is the service uh we have now uh the bulk of it of course is those are the big buses we call them 72 passenger um you probably couldn't get 72 high schoolers on there but that's that's what the industry calls them we have 83 of those big buses school for 180 days and the contract extension we signed in june with sta is typical of the way these things are priced you pay a price per day per bus in the contract next year it'll be 399.72 so you just multiply across and and there's what it'll cost to run the big buses we also run buses for summer school this is regular ed summer school there's 10 buses that program lasts 15 days and similarly in the contract there's a price for that uh 390 dollars and uh same thing with the math uh the early release i'll just take a minute to explain that typically a typical school bus run a driver would do a high school run drop them off do a middle school run drop them off and a elementary and drop them off three tiers but if we uh release one of our schools early then let's say the high school dismisses early the uh the drivers have to go early to work maybe an hour early do the do the high school and then wait until it's time to dismiss the middle schools or the elementaries and there's a cost for starting the drivers early now when it it really comes let me just jump down to the uh non-public schools the connect in connecticut the law is you have to provide the non-public schools the same level of service that you provide your public school students meaning if your bus runs uh for your public schools are 45 minutes you can't make uh but private school runs 60 minutes or if you're loading 50 kids in a bus for one you can't do 72 in another it's got to be the same but what happens is just like we have early release days for different things maybe it's parent conferences or what have you if we release earlier maybe it's just an early release day for us before thanksgiving or before a holiday those non-public schools may be on their regular dismissal time so the network takes longer and there's more layovers same thing just the way we might dismiss our high school a couple day days have an early release immaculate might do the same thing and uh if we don't then that that run time uh extends and so whenever we're off um alignment with the non-public schools on our early release or theirs there's a layover so if you go back up the chart we think there were 16 early release days for us uh last year and uh it involved a total of 74 buses there's a price in the contract 56 uh 28 dollars uh 56 28 cents and there's the extension and then finally for the public school we have some late bus runs we have two buses that run from danbury high school that leave at four o'clock on monday and wednesdays and then we have some buses uh called for adult ed that also leave the high school monday wednesday thursday and friday there's a price of 82 dollars we have a late bus out of pembroke on monday and wednesdays and we have three late buses at rogers park four at broadview monday wednesday and thursdays they depart at 4 15.

knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you very much so next is a roll call and as i mentioned we have two commissioners that are unable to attend council member radina has a work conflict as does commissioner george they both let us know in advance but missy if you'd go through the roll call and we'll know who else is here and who else is missing thanks absolutely and if you could just state where you're calling in from and give me a second to type that into notes that would be great uh commissioner hookum uh chuckle come in my not so warm office michigan commissioner mcgomber here uh and calling in from my house in ann arbor commissioner clevy here calling from my solar house in hanover commissioner levin you're from my home in ann arbor and tara mursky i know you're giving my home in ann arbor thank you vice chair coleman garcia i'm uh here in uh my home in ann arbor councilmember briggs here in my messy house in ann arbor commissioner mccoy here in ann arbor uh commissioner kerber here and in my house in ann arbor uh commissioner peck you're in my um dog ridden house in ann arbor i love these descriptors everyone uh commissioner juno here am i home in ann arbor commissioner stevenson thank you very much so uh next time the agenda is the approval of the agenda can i get a motion to approve the agenda so moved by council member riggs and seconded by uh council or commissioner hookum all those in favor say i and raise your hand hi anyone opposed any abstentions very good approved thank you very much and then uh we also have to approve the minutes of our last meeting which was a work session uh by the way we had some problem with the legistar site hopefully people had a chance to review them i did and i didn't see any issue with them hopefully others did as well can i get the motion to approve the minutes council member breaks and seconded by commissioner stevenson thank you so now we uh have public input here we do have to do a vote on that oh we do sorry you're right thank you uh all those in in favor of uh approval of the minutes say i and raise your hand any opposed the abstentions motion carries thank you so now we move on to public input this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes i'll repeat what i said before if you're watching on ctn please call 888 788-0099 or 877-853-5247 [Music] and enter the meeting id six seven five one six eight one nine of course that also works if you're dialing on your phone this information is also on the meeting agenda and on the video feed staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone and you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background noise so that we may hear you clearly and then finally please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments all right caller ending in six five zero good evening members of the commission my name is wayne appleyard and i was on the energy commission for about 26 years first i would like to say how great the brian community program you will see a presentation on this evening is osi should really be applauded for developing a comprehensive and innovative program that will hopefully reduce the energy use in up to 260 homes in that neighborhood while i was commissioner i was one of the early drafters of what was tom time of marketing then head home energy assessment disclosure then help home energy labeling program and now herd home energy rating disclosure this ordinance would simply require that the home energy score assessment be conducted and made available to all prospective home buyers when the home was put on the market giving the buyers more information on how much it would cost to heat and cool their home as well as improvements that they could make enroll into their mortgage the number of acronyms gives you an indication as to how long this has been worked on it was first proposed in 2011 when the commission including myself was working on the climate action plan it was also part of the climate funding proposal promoted by the interclimate partnership before funding became available through the county millage in 2018.

the number of jobs um i went to spark and they were unable to provide me a number but hopefully i can get that from the university um this clause here come 39 that comes directly from the university of michigan and their website um so what this is basically telling us um and um there's some other slides that i can show either tonight or tomorrow is what we we clearly are seeing is vehicle miles traveled um are increasing the emissions go up with those uh as is reflected in this in this other statement i added and that means also if you're looking at impact on individual in individuals and family units that means those people are spending more time in their car and their transportation costs are higher because they can't afford to live in the city and there isn't there isn't frankly enough supply to meet demand um so there's some other things in here that you can read yourself i will send to everyone rather than us looking at them tonight two slides of that back up the two statements that are in the middle of the uh the page there showing that ownership is down in these income ranges weight ranges and not only that um the percentage of or the the percentage or proportion of renters um particularly everybody earning less than 50 000 in almost every range below that has also decreased so that not only are they not able to buy a home but there aren't also not able to afford to rent a home um in the city of ann arbor and so missy go ahead and scan down i'm not going to go through i don't think a whole lot more i didn't do a whole lot to change to the resolve clauses um those might be something that we consider but i just wanted people to um see the kinds of things that i added and um i'll open it up for a quick discussion and um otherwise then uh what i'd like to do is essentially record in the minutes that we've had our first reading or review of the uh resolution and that we would then take into account people's uh potential changes um and vote on it in the next meeting um commissioner peck were you did you have anything else to say or is your hand just up for before okay so commissioner cleavy um i just was wondering if you could add before you send it out add the piece commissioner said i you know whether it's net zero or perhaps be more specific lead standard um you know we all know you can do a net zero in a whole bunch of ways you know add a few more bicycle racks and and we got net zero so you know let's make sure this housing has insulation in the walls um you know energy efficient stuff it's a meets the electrical code that we're trying to do and hopefully it's positioned so if it's not solar on it at least it's solar ready and so if we're gonna put houses in green space let's make sure they face south and you know some things like that so um you know that's let's add that to what you're going to send out because i i agree totally we should okay we're going to do this let's do it right uh commissioner uh so in our uh carbon neutrality work we didn't i don't think we specified a uh a building you know lead uh or anything like that i mean i think we came to conclusion leed isn't really appropriate for this um but i don't i'm not an expert in that space and i don't remember what i know there were some other ideas discussed there were there's a recommendation of seven categories of building and the university is set establishing building standards i know that they're in the process of being reviewed i don't know what they what the recommendations were there were recommendations and i don't remember exactly what they were for um residential units but i think something to the effect of net zero makes sense because the university and the city are both pledged to net zero though that's what i would say something compatible with ann arbor's commitment and the university of michigan's commitment to net zero yeah that would work but that would work yes and the other thing is i don't you know i i like distributed solar personally very much and i don't really want to dilute that but i think you know we don't want to be seen as telling university of michigan how to do it you know because their plan right now is to do ground source heat pumps and utility scales solar and wind i you know i think there's a good chance mark that they would would like to put solar on top of some things uh but so far i haven't seen any anything in that direction you know so it this could be a community project we agree it's the thing to do but it's not the cheapest thing to do so what i would recommend is we um i'll try to work something in there and i think one thing we can be cognizant of is a not being overly prescriptive and b considering do we put it in a whereas clause or do we put it in a resolved clause um so and the resolve clauses already are basically just that the city consults with the university and is not making you know specific demands and maybe the number is something that we should also talk about whether we think 2000 is appropriate number or whether we weigh in and say it should be higher or lower or not specific so maybe those are kinds of things that all of us think about here in the next month and there's no problem in my mind for us to say something like um you know we recommend exploration of uh you know a uh making this a a demonstration development including uh distributed energy on location or something like that but say it in a way that we recommend or something you know not don't get too pushy because i just know some there's still some people at um who just hate anyone telling them what to do you know it's like this arrogance or something i don't know what it is so we just have to be a little you know in all leadership is all changing so that's probably going to change but we probably all myself that's all i'm saying right i'm not trying to say be total you know pull all punches commissioner just really quickly um i noticed that there's a lot of capitalized words in there that aren't defined like what is workplace housing i could interpret that a lot of ways i could you inserted the word affordable with a capital i don't know what that means i could define that 100 different ways probably so the sponsors of the resolution should probably look at it in the way of people that don't know better and please define words that are capitalized thank you any other comments seeing none uh we will close this topic and take it up in our next meeting and go back to our agenda which is uh reports from osi and news from the commission and commissioners missy you want to start us out sir you bet let me just get out of my notes here great discussion uh sorry before we close that chair mercury should i just send you the notes and you'll do a work up on proposed edits and then we'll circulate it and that's okay you can reflect that in the minutes too okay and if anybody if anybody has any specific comments or wants to collaborate with me as we did on the feasibility study that would not be in the case of a quorum um feel free to reach out to me and i'll make sure that we do that in a small group so that we're not violating open meeting act related issues so i'll do it on my own unless i hear from anybody and yes councilmember briggs and i would just i guess to save folks time i think that ultimately that the end resolution here is going to look really different and so it's probably not worth your time really thinking through like do this this exact where as clause makes sense or this resolved clause but um if there are just some general principles or ideas that the energy commission finds to be valuable that would we would you know there's support of this of this idea and then if if we were presenting something that this would be a key statement that might be included in that i think i mean it's i certainly i'm sure that the sponsors of this welcome additional edits as well to the resolution but um a general principle might also be helpful thanks for that guidance okay thank you um yeah for the update and some of the things going on just to share the last few weeks have been pretty busy as we prep for the next budget cycle for those who may not be as familiar uh which i also am constantly learning as i'm only in year three and a half the city has a two-year budget process so we're the second year of a of a two-year budget so it's really tweaks and modifications but we have a newest city administrator and so we're learning a process together and their priorities as well uh so that's been pretty heavy on our plate uh kind of reframing recrafting and of course prepping for a potential millage and the budget there which i look forward to the body but we've started to really spend a lot of time moving that strategy forward and of course working with counterparts like legal to understand where the lines are uh in terms of how we can allocate those resources and i'm pretty excited about some of them i don't think they're pretty excited i'm pretty excited about some of the ways that we're pushing uh what's possible with uh that potential resource i also wanted to share we're gearing up we'll be filing paperwork shortly to intervene in the dt every resource plan uh filing that i'm sorry the rate case that just came out so we are we're prepping uh for that we will unequivocally be intervening uh for those who haven't seen it it's uh it's not great news it's a pretty significant increase in streetlight rates residential rates commercial rates um and we're we're not we're not pleased so we'll be spending a lot of time doing discovery and uh working in that landscape and i know we'll be coming to the commission with our overview but we have 1200 1400 pages uh to get through in that intervention so it'll take us a little bit of time on the opposite side i want to share good news which is the landlord spoiler project is coming soon we are prepping to come to the body hopefully in april uh we would like to come to the energy commission and share with you the project and preview the pricing and then the next week go to council uh with the the pricing and the special contract so we can decide if we want to move forward in that so uh we're in my understanding of zt's and final negotiation with the preferred vendor to get to final pricing so we can have that available uh just to kind of fill you in where we go from there is once uh city council considers if they decide to move forward with a special contract that special contract then goes to the michigan public service commission and once blessed by the public service commission the project moves forward so shovels could be in the ground uh as early as the fall if everything moves forward so it's pretty exciting project moving forward um and then i will be coming to you in a very near near term talking about the potential for the ppa and some options that we have there so just wanted to tee that up uh this is actually a side project we got approved in our last vgp filing the voluntary green pricing program where we got the landfill solar to be a community solar offering we also asked for the utility to consider a vpa with the city and the judge approved that and so now we're trying to understand for the options analysis what that would actually look like and i'd like to bring that to the body and get your thoughts and reactions on it before we decide how we want to move that forward for those who don't know we are in i have no idea what day it is it's tuesday we're in day three of the zero waste challenge here at the city and i certainly related as we think about the circular economy encourage everyone to participate in that we will also be running the zero waste challenge during 820 week and we are working with students at the university of michigan to run a zero-waste challenge in the fall so join any time it is uh really accessible i i appreciate our collaborators and partners uh there's a lot of other things we are working on a written update that i would like to send to the commission in advance kind of following what the transportation commission does so that way you can kind of see the suite of things that are happening we've started a template we're just a little bit a little bit slow to finish that template as we've been doing some pretty sweet work uh the last thing i just wanted to share this is for anyone who might be listening on the line and also for our commissioners right now public comment is open on arpa the american rescue plan act spending please cast your vote for the kinds of projects that you'd like to see supported and if you don't see a project that you like and not hopper please let us know it's really really important that we get feedback ultimately council will make the decision but we want to make sure that all of us are hearing from you and there are some sustainability projects but it's your choice you get to vote thanks missy appreciate that update update from and news from commissioners um so i'll hello oh go ahead council member riggs um sorry it's debating whether or not this is an update for the energy commission or not um it's on my mind today and we've just talked about u of m so i'll update it um anyway so if uh for folks who are following the um council meeting last night um council opted to move forward with a widening of east medical center drive bridge lifting sort of conditions on that widening um which it will have sort of expanded non-motorized connections on the eastern side of the bridge which is the side kind of closest to north campus but the sidewalk on the west side will be reduced from ten and a half feet to eight feet um and um i am disappointed about um us having not more conditions on that um i'm expressing more viewpoints of my own than i probably should at this point but um uh it's sort of uh maybe relevant for this discussion because this was kind of a little bit of a wrestling between university of michigan and the city of ann arbor about what that project should look like and and what what values were important to move forward in that project i appreciate that insight in that news uh so um i will recognize other commissioners but the next point on the agenda is working group updates and i'll ask if there's any updates from working groups and if so if anybody else comes up with another idea i'll recognize them does anybody want to provide a working group update there's a very small update for the transportation energy or transportation electrification group on the electric vehicle readiness ordinance that passed early last year there's some changes that are being made i think i mentioned it at our last meeting and that's proceeding um the is going to be going before the planning commission in the next month or so the uh the changes that are being considered um which i will be giving you more of an update at that time they are haven't been solidified yet thank you carlene anyone else seeing no hands uh we'll move now to uh the closing few end items the first is public input so this is another opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes uh if you are watching on ctn please call 888 788 or 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 937-6751 six eight one nine this information is also displayed on the agenda and the video feed staff will select callers that have raised their hands one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak plus please press star 9 on your phone and you will then hear an automated announcement that the post is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background noises so that we may hear you and finally please state your name and address at the beginning of the comments if i was smart i would record that and press playback so do we have any caller ending in five three four good evening my name is tom stahlberg i live in lowertown in ann arbor and i want to talk about i could talk about a lot of things from this meeting but i want to talk about that last bit the housing resolution um i am very encouraged by the direction that you were taking this in uh i think we have a really interesting uh pro and con a monstrous pro and con with the university of michigan it's like swinging for a home run and you're either gonna strike out or you're gonna get it we can't make the university do much of anything but if they do go along with this they can do so much with this when the university gets something right they really do get it right and then this here's an opportunity if we give them as much encouragement as we can and go ahead and push the limit they'll throttle back i suppose if they want to um like i said you're not going to make them do anything they don't want to do but the encouragement and the opportunity are just enormous here and i'm hopeful that one of the things that the university can do is do things that the private marketplace cannot do in the private marketplace there's a lot of things that we are hoping developers will do but we can't well our current ordinances don't necessarily make them do it and sometimes we offer incentives and premiums and we have ordinance trade-offs we might give them oh 30 more height if they add in some sustainability measures or affordable housing but these are options and but the university if they decide to do something they'll do it they'll put in the sustainability measures uh and it's done so we don't have to you know on a on a parcel by parcel in the private marketplace hope that we get it and nudge people along so i really think this is a wonderful opportunity um by the way i am a real estate professional i've been one for over 30 years now i'm currently a broker so i have a little insight into some of the other things you're talking about but i want to mention the university of michigan added uh i think about 8 000 new students over the last decade and they put in they have the monkey dorm they took up maybe a thousand beds and the private marketplace let's say approximately four thousand bets we're still short on the number of beds needed just to house these new students that the universities brought in so on the one hand they're a wonderful uh partner to engage with this opportunity on the other hand there are we should make them feel a little obligated they brought these numbers up here and because those beds aren't met in terms of supply and demand the you know that's pushed over into the rest of our town and impact and we're also talking about other additional employees that have been brought in uh that number of students requires x number of employees at the university as well so i'm really hopeful that we can get somewhere with this and i'm glad that a couple council members just got the ball rolling and go ahead and take it the next step and i think this is a really good commission to be pushing this uh you are dr stahl's office is called the office of sustainability and innovation well just the right department and then the right commission to to push this a little bit you know go ahead and push the envelope on this one it's my encouragement to you thank you very much thanks for sticking with us and thanks for your comments missing anyone else that's all too risky okay so um we are down to uh items for the next agenda and what i'd like to preface any discussion of that with is first of all um when we had our working session in january we voted on topics um those are reflected in the meeting minutes and um we covered one of those topics today and that's an update on the bryant neighborhood that was one of the top vote getters um i want to point out and this is something that carlene and missy and i will talk about um with the climate millage um that is something where we're gonna have to have somebody probably come from the outside and talk at the appropriate time when when they're ready um staff is not able to um weigh in on you know the the millage and um they they can certainly ask questions but it it's probably unlikely that we're going to ask staff um to do that just fyi i'm a little bit connected in i um drafted an faq with some previous input that was provided and that's gone back to the brain trust or the that's been working on this so hopefully that's something that we can um hear about relatively soon that's near the top of our agenda but um i just wanted to to mention that we're cognizant of what we talked about last time and trying to handle items according to that force ranking that we did so anything else about that list or something that's missing or something that's come up any other input seeing none uh carlene and missy and i will put our hips together as far as the next meeting and missy's already mentioned a couple things that we want to have updates on maybe not next month but soon um and don't hesitate to reach out to any of us in the middle of the month uh missy go ahead i'm sorry i forgot this in the updates but before we adjourn i wanted to share that on thursday night rmi formerly the rocky mountain institute is doing a special webinar on energy options available to ann arbor they've customized it for us looking at kind of michigan energy policy what others are doing it's a really nice overview and if you know anyone i'm sure the commission doesn't need this but if you know anyone that might be interested please help us share the word uh about that webinar it'll be six o'clock and you can find all the details on the website uh when you say on the website and uh um both on the city's website if you go to the main site and go to calendar it's listed for thursday night but also at the osi site on sustainability we have an events tab and you can find it there too okay good thanks great tip and i encourage everybody to share that with your networks um i think that's it so it is 8 41 and i declare this meeting adjourned thanks everybody for hanging in there and i appreciate the great discussion tonight have a good one you

Please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And Mr. Rub, would you please recite the mission statement? Sure. Our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future. Okay. Uh we've got a couple of public comments that were emailed in. Uh the first one is from William Morgan. Um and the topic is the TTRO out of Sangaman County. Hello all. Uh, one of the most important facets of the law is the idea that it should be predictable and not prone to wild shifts. We are a society built upon laws and not upon men. This is why the doctrine of starry decisis exists. It's part of why judges look to precedent not just to ensure that we are learning from what came before us, but in an attempt to ensure that there are no sudden shifts in the law.

Thank you for taking our students and teachers health seriously and thank you for not subjecting our students and teachers to even more uncertainty in this difficult draining emotional time. William Morgan Mooney and the next is from Mary Oler um says dearmon 2011 school board and superintendent Dr. Caracoglanes. There is no doubt in my mind that there is still division in the community, the teachers and the staff members, the board members and the parents of Cremon 2011 school this year when it comes to health and safety guidelines in our schools. As we have all heard by now, Sangaman County Circuit Court Judge Railene Griska declared Pritskar's emergency rules for CO 19 mitigations in schools null and void. and she issued the order in a lawsuit with more than 145 school districts across the state. I know Creek Moni was not on the list, but we all know there is we all but excuse me, I know Creekmon was not on the list, but we all know as many other local school districts around the surrounding area scrambled over the past weekend to have emergency meetings to determine if they were lifting their mask rules.

and then i came back for a brief all-star reunion year in 2016. um this was my first school and i had taught it several since but i always think of tahunto as my only school and i've told others that that have not been here which i don't have a problem with um so i feel like it's my home still we did as jay said we started a girls mentoring program on november 13th with a small group of middle school girls in clinton and have had tremendous success um it's just it's just been wonderful and amazing and encouraging and so i am hoping that we could do the same here at hondo for the middle school girls here um that is my hope and it would fall under the same umbrella of real mentors and it would follow the same basic model as the boys program that is already established here at tahanto so thanks for listening thank you very much next for public health we have jessica david um so dear western berlin school committee and concerned residents watching online um i promise tonight in regards to the letter they've written to that scene i first want to thank dr susan henry for her service she was always respectful and her position to represent her town and careful to analyze david to help her make those decisions it's very sad that we lost such an intelligent individual due to bullying within the community so like i said it comes in regards to the letter being sent and written to desi i'm concerned that the individual writing the letter will not represent the district with respect and a civil tone of note anyone including a newspaper reporter can request her resignation letter as is part of the public record along with many other communications to the committee so dating back to march 9th 2021 meeting there's been swearing disrespect to the teachers on their remote learning efforts and to mr zhang himself and also blatant disregard for current data in favor of personal opinion holding a seat on the school committee means representing the towns not your individual views reviewing the data and discussing her the open meeting law and then with respect coming to a collective agreement and then voting the school committee meetings have often occurred on zoom the past two years due to coven and it might have given the illusion that you as a committee were operating in a vacuum i would like to point out that although only 15 or so people attended the meeting last week over 200 people were upon zoom watching the meeting some parents were prevented like open infections from attending in person i am hopeful that a survey will be sent out soon from the superintendent that will allow parents to voice their opinions unmasked so that when the committee can review the data and not solely based on a few parents opinions my own included thankfully states surrounding us are viewing the data and the downward trends of cobin and ending mass mandates on an appropriate schedule connecticut february 28th new jersey march 7th delaware in oregon march 31st i trust jesse also to follow the ctc guidance of masking up indoors in over 50 phobic cases per hundred thousand residents or positivity rate of at least eight percent as of february third last thursday only five days ago 99.9 percent of the country did not meet the for this requirement to be removed so thankfully the last week has shown the continued decline in the cases something that was not guaranteed for the sub-daring of omicron threatening to stall the declining cases i hope that jesse will reinstate the mass mandate if we reach those benchmarks again i encourage parents and the school committee to continue discussions with respect and with an effort to remain civil as laura said last meeting in the end we're all neighbors and if i might add our children friends finally i end with a district-wide request that many people run this november for elections and even more show up to vote neglecting this voting duty has led to certain books being banned in other states and it is our duty to come respectfully and departing because i have patients still at the clinic jessica negley thank you we are going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is the consensus is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented any discussion okay all in favor all right as well closed motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes we are going to move on to the reorganization of the berlin boylston regional school committee um at this time i would like to entertain a motion to elect a new chair i'll make a motion to elect lori hart as our chair all in favor aye uh opposed i'm an eye as well the motion to elect lori heart does share his asses thank you motion to elect megan grill as vice chair passes congratulations okay um i would like to entertain a motion to appoint a member to replace susan on the policy subcommittee secretary i spoke to christie about that are you still retaining it yeah i just wouldn't enjoy it thank you yes we thank you for pointing that out i appreciate it um so do we have this would someone like to appoint someone to the policy subcommittee um i would like to entertain a motion to appoint a member to replace susan on the negotiation committee i'll make a motion to um have glory hart be part of the negotiations [Music] negotiation committee passes [Music] district improvement plan just to talk about timeline we talked a little bit about this earlier so we'll stop collecting data and watch and we will actually put together a new transition improvement plan because it will run from 2023 to 2025 we'll put that together in the summer for a vote by this committee in most likely september there was some discussion of whether there was going to be a vote in december um by whoever the next committee is going to be but after we discussed it with the leadership team we we just thought we would be presidents to have this committee going on and you've done most of the work athletic fees typically once a year the committee votes on whether to change athletic fees usually the voters we're going to need preschoolers after some discussions we decided that this would not be a good year to increase athletic peace so we decided not to bring it up for a vote and so they would remain the same the athletic features remain safe for 22 to 23 school years and finally the enrollment report i think you have that so let me just try to go over this as quickly as i can um we usually do this once a year i didn't do it last year because gymnastics didn't really provide any accurate data but the nasdaq is a group that provides most of the data we use and what they use for their forecasting and the criteria you see their very great migration uh wholesale age group trends new construction past and north history health trends economic trend and school choice and they they don't always apply to us but earth rate certainly does migration typically the state does not have a lot of renters but with more rentals being built that will have an impact certainly home sales age group trends families with children between one and four years to be a little more mobile once once this child gets older than that they tend to try to find a home and settle down uh baby moments we do have something in the community they have to dial so they move new construction we have quite a bit of that going on past enrollment history the projection view is a five-year ruling average um certainly health trends again have an impact with covert and also the opioid epidemic has had a major impact on lot of young kids economic trends inflation um you know we have families who have moved out of suburbs because of prices of gas and rent move closer to the not city big of an issue with us but certainly school choices nasdaq uses a technique called cohort survival technique and it takes the number of students that will historically survive one the great and they use those percentages to come up with a a ratio which they then apply to the the next grades up it has a it has about a 99 accuracy per year for the first five years and and so for a five-year forecast the uh is accurate between 95 and 99 after that it just goes off the cliff so once you start looking out like past like 10 years and passed you can have up to a 30 to a 40 percent error so that's why we don't even though they give us they look out that far we typically don't go that far this technique uh is reliable but it's less reliable under two conditions one when a district has a thousand or less students and the other is when there's a lot of building going on we have both of those in our community uh which makes forecasting enrollment uh much more difficult so i'll start going through the tiles don't go through all the numbers you have to listen i will say if you look at uh berlin memorial um the the enrollment numbers have stayed fairly stable and part of that is because they have whatever mass they plan to program they've been able to [Music] not count us because they don't have official caps on building permits but the building in berlin has been much lower than it has been in boylston also if you look at the childhood birth rate and growth it's been stable it's gone up about one uh one birth per year and which is so the average the rolling arrows for birth and uh merlin over 24 it has gone up by one to 25 so it's not tremendous but it's it's certainly increasing and it will increase the wall with increased building uh the next piece of data i have there is uh the number of children born versus the k enrollment you see if you look at the graph it's a little easier to see these are usually just worksheets i use for myself and it's easy to explain them if you look at if you look at the number of children born which is the blue line and then decay enrollment which is the gray line and then what i did is i just put trend lines in there so you can see that the they're almost parallel so the number of children born and the number of children that then the 10k five years later is very similar so that's been um so that's been pretty constant in that time the thing that may change some of that is the uh the next set of data i show which is building permits it's been pretty low but in 2021 they it's so in 2015 seven permits 2019 11th period in 2021 48 now 34 of those have been 55 and older but you have to remember that i think it's one in five one in six grandparents take care of their children now so even though it's a 55 and older community there's still a possibility that we get children a development like that um 14 of those permits are single families and um 12 of those this is a 12 unit development going in right next to berlin memorial so one of those permits one of the 48 is for one of the houses that's going in there but they're all you know they're all big houses so you know you don't know you don't know it could you could get no children out of there which is unlikely you could get 25 and so the other 11 terms just for that single family development will most likely come in 2022 and that will affect by the time someone pulls a permit and someone occupies alice in roughly one to three years and if they have children when they you know when they get there it's basically five years so um we'll see how that goes fortunately uh one of the things we have in favor in berlin is the size of the school currently the average size of the classroom is around 14 students per class and that's fairly low so you we could have we could have up to you know 18 in the class it would still be it'd still be comfortable um it's you know it's not always what you want but there's some there's stuff some room to grow there but there isn't room for there is more than two classrooms per grade they just don't have the space so when it gets to that point which i don't see in the very near future um you know there's going to be you know it will have to be a different kind of conversation this is very long time yeah [Music] river bridge which is the uh problem complex that's that's completed and so far we have i believe four students out of that which originally they forecasted 29 then they forecasted zero and so four is uh as far as what we got so far and i think it's fully occupied besides the numbers any questions about merlin okay move out to boylston uh boyle since a little bit different but boylston has had um lots of building even even before i arrived here i remember you know it was an interesting thing when i my first entity was at pds and it was in the there's been a library in the media center and so on and i got there early to drive around the town and um i remember someone saying that the population was going down you know and i just driven up seaworldly and i wanted the job so i didn't say lord you know be driven up later on and but there's a lot of building going on there and it continues to be a lot of building in that area so if you look at the projections the projections and these are these are october 1 numbers for the roman nbs if you look at the projection versus the actual so that both october 1 reports you can see that the actual numbers um are always greater than the projections of um so that school is increasing at a much higher rate than berlin memorial if you look at the number of children born you can see that that's increasing too and in fact i didn't go i stopped at 2017 but if you go out to this year the the rolling ten year average so has been 35 this is the first year that the average is above 40.

people have it but it's not optimal and and again i always point this out when i took this job here and they did a survey in the town and uh the question he asked nothing questions but one of the questions was um what do you want the superintendent and the new superintendent to be able to achieve and the very first response was um low class sizes so it's a matter of fact it came up at least two more times in that survey result so it is something that both top value is a small class size so and the tops have been really great at supporting us i i i have to say both both house to make sure we maintain those but you know we always talk about surveys we always want to send surveys out but it was really clear when i and when i interviewed it was clear that that was one of the um you know that was one of the things that the town prides itself on that we have small class sizes and teachers are able to give more individual attention to students and certainly covert is you know pulling a lot of stuff out of the water but um you know before that that's exactly what was happening so we've got enough support from the town so far so you know this is a difficult budget and you'll see next week and well talked about it that you know special education costs really have really skyrocketed and not just in this community i talked to another superintendent just twice who who said the same things as their special education numbers that are really driving their budget more than any kind of plan and growth i think one of the things that these projections miss is a family like my own that who came to town to the existing home when our children were three four years old they weren't born of course and then they moved into the region because of the school and just the migration in and out because all the families do tend to sell and they're replaced by families like yourself who have kids so yeah and again because we have you know it's like our class our class our schools they're so small we look at that cash with us for example even this you know one or two students can consume the results and so when you only have a thousand if you only have a thousand students and you have a lot of building going on you have a lot of factors that you you know you really can't you know okay if you have one way or we have two that make an enormous difference in the capacity of our schools so you know we keep an eye on it and you know certainly school choice is one of the issues that comes up and and people usually the usually the rule of thumb the community starts to get a little antsy about community about school choice numbers when it gets to starts to edge up to about 25 percent of your population because because it translates to your graduating class you have a graduating class you know a quarter of them on from your towels anymore so it starts to become an issue we're not we're not there yet yes how long can these trends continue before you start thinking about needing new space new buildings um i had i had the principal to do projections a couple years ago when i have them they you know we have it's our past five years certainly like i said in berlin we have variable class sizes so there's not space but there's room to grow in the classroom boyles is just the opposite they have bigger classes but they have some more room to grow in the school so it again you know buying next year one of the things dave asked for is another teacher he doesn't need one this year next year would definitely be because he will have a big kindergarten class these classes come in over all 50 plus now and that's october one numbers by by mid-year they're closer to 60.

um but will at least help you identify what classes fall into humanities and what fall into stem in that stem category you'll have three credits in math three credits in science two credits in business or uh career and technical education and a half credit of that needs to be in personal finance and then one stem elective most students especially in the area of math will very easily meet that math requirement within their first few years of high school because you can transfer some of your middle school math credit to the high school the that written out in the statute is also in the program of studies the grad requirements but some students will come here already completing algebra 1 so they'll get that credit and they'll start in geometry here a full credit in pe and a full credit in health a full credit in world language and again that can be earned at the middle school level math and world language are the two subject areas where we can transfer some credit from middle school because it's parallel to the high school class the mastery-based performance assessment is one credit which dr reid will talk more about in a bit and then there are three other credits that can be in any subject area of your choosing what you're most interested in for a total of 25 credits and all students are scheduled for at least six and a half credits every year so as long as you do the minimum six and a half pass all your courses you'll actually leave here with more credits than you need for graduation according to the state you go to the next one okay so that's what i was just saying about the six and a half credits what is important to remember about credits is that is awarded on if you pass the course and then also that you're in the course enough that you're attending regularly so credit can be taken away if you fail a course or if you don't go to that class enough to really earn the credit for being in that class even if your grade was in passing range um it does specify there that if a student does not pass a course they'll have an opportunity to make up that credit if they have above a 50 that could be done in summer school um if if not you may have to retake the course again at cheshire high school so it's very important from the beginning that you're taking your credit seriously but as uh dr gad was saying we have lots of supports that are going to be in place for you to make sure you can meet those goals so i think that goes to dr reed now right no who's doing thank labs thank you soon you pop up the supports oh these are the okay those are the some of the specific that's okay the specific academics that you will you'll be taking pretty much your freshman year when you walk through the door you'll have it obviously in english modern world history science depends on what you did at dot and what your teacher recommendation is the same with math some students take earth science some students take biology some students take algebra 1 some take geometry some take algebra 2.

so more updates for us um let's see again it's all pretty straightforward the gist of this update is that it wasn't uh expressly identifying birth to three qualified personnel now obviously in the cheshire public schools we hold those people in great reverence we're the only birth to three program housed in a school system in connecticut and so these are our people making these recommendations at ppt's uh they're more than qualified to make those recommendations and so where where you see these policies updated it's to expressly indicate that you know we have to give them a voice at the table for uh ppt's you know the individualized education plan meetings that we have so you know you'll see here in the gray it's specifically calling out birth to three [Music] the other item is something that you know you guys are familiar with the transition component shifted from 16 years of age to 14 years of age the other thing that's not necessarily i don't think specifically called out here though it goes to age 22 that was a change in the law so basically when we have an individualized education plan meeting for a 14 year old student we invite them to the ppt we ask about their interests in you know high school to post-graduate educational programming or options you know like you said earlier tim it could be trades it could be the military it could be a variety of different things and we start that planning process where it used to be 16 is now 14.

um you'll i'm sorry page 9. on page 12 you'll see um you you've heard us talk about um funding our schools on an equal basis and giving principals um a little more in the of the decision making process you'll see exactly if remember it's 65 75 85 but you'll see those dollar amounts the projected enrollment and what the allocation is you can look at a particular school and and see how much they're getting for those kind of things other things i mentioned the state revenue is all there the educational cost sharing and so on but also if you look this year we have a page we always put on state and federal grants where we show each grant how much we're getting this year how much we expect next year i think that's important to look at this year because uh you'll begin to see the coronavirus relief funds uh running out next year is the first of three years when they gradually disappear it's been called a cliff but what you'll see there is the cares act which we have this year for 795 000 that's gone that ends in june so that that's good to look at but you'll also see on that same page our alliance grant which is going up again this year it's 17 million next year it's gone to 19.4 million so you'll see it right there too so those are the the highlights of the book and like i said you'll you'll see more about some of these really important things coming up thank you all right did you john i'm sorry you have these two more slides at budget driving sure yeah and these were from our earlier from last week and i think i mentioned some of those but salaries and wages of course that's always always the biggest driver and along with health insurance that's uh two-thirds of our budget at least and if you looked at the total increase uh that represents half of the increase that we're asking for and that's that's pretty typical uh year in and year out um that's what drives a school budget and um as as you all know it's it's largely your teacher contract and um what that settles for and and what that pays that is pretty much what drives your budget uh transportation special ed you'll you'll hear some specifics there those are contracts uh for the most part whether it's the contract with sta or bus company that has a couple more years to go that's calling for a four percent price increase um special education tuitions those of course come out of the pupil placement process and the ieps here's the numbers are right up there you see those that first column that general fund increase uh that's adds to our total and if if this would be my point if it's 9.2 percent the first two items are 4.7 when you take them together so that's why i say it's half and then as you look down the chart the literacy the enrollment um and and the afters uh there's another uh another third of the increase right there so that's that's why we've chosen um what we'd like to dive deeper on uh tonight and you can see uh displayed clearly there um what we're looking for in local funds after we apply some of the uh reserves and the grants the finance committee itself uh had a good look at what the actual reserves are i think it was their september meeting um they're they're specified there's there's a half a dozen of them but there's one that's specified for health insurance so we'll we'd like to apply that to our health insurance budget line there's another one for special ed i think there's one for technology so we're going to try and line those up right with uh the the line the items right now there's about 10 million dollars in reserves on the city balance sheet this certainly wouldn't draw them all down we think a gradual um release is is the best instead of all at once or uh over more time than that so you see it right there and i think is there a mic is there another slide for me there okay this is um i think it'd be karen and perhaps kim thank you thanks john um i believe cara cara is up next time for casamaro uh carawanzer you just did advance the slides i think it's me i think it's kelly yeah so i just want to take a minute cara will go next um just to talk a little bit about the special education and enrollment growth what i did here is projected the special education numbers from 2016 until our last account and remember these numbers are based on our october first count every year um so over the last six years we have grown by 340 special education students in district and even though this graph looks like it's a gradual increase over time that's equivalent to one of our smaller elementary schools um so the special education department and program is has certainly expanded uh quite rapidly in recent years um and along with that comes some some funding challenges um so for my uh portion of the presentation i'll focus on uh two different pieces of information um one of it is the staffing that's accompanied with an increased enrollment like this and um the other is some of the higher cost of some of our out of district placements um that are encumbered when when more students are with us in district um one of the things that i also want to just highlight for the board is one of our most rapidly growing populations is the preschool over the last uh six years we've grown by about 50 students at our preschool level and we currently have 168 as of our october 1st count and those are students that are identified with special needs so we have other typical students in the program so the program runs at about 250 students but 168 of them in the beginning of the year were identified as students in need of services the preschool is unique in that students begin and enroll based on their third birthday um so the enrollment there is different than kindergarten where most students traditionally start the first day of school we enroll students throughout the entire school year so we'll typically start around 1 150 or 160 um in the last year or two and grow up to about 220 or so by june by the end of the school year um and so uh these these um enrollment growth have have caused us to have to hire staff in a number of different areas um and you'll see in later slides so i won't go over it in too much detail now but additional special education teachers as well as related services staff members i know in previous years i've spoken to the board about occupational therapists and speech and language pathologists and so we have continued need um in that area as well as school counselors or social workers um and we are also seeing um an increase in some of our social emotional needs of all students but particularly our special education students we have seen more concerning and challenging behaviors among a small population of students that have caused us to place a couple of additional students out of district and you saw in the previous slide there was a 600 000 um dollar distribution of an increase in out of district tuitions um and that is our projection for next year with a a couple of additional placements on that that will be at a cost of about 600 000 to the district go ahead dr casamaro thanks kelly um so similar to other special special populations we are continuing to see growth in our esl population our multi-language learners and so you can see from the graph that the elementary is represented in blue middle school is in orange and the high school is represented in the gray the preponderance of our esl students come come to us in the younger grades that number has kind of gently gradually increasing um along with our other grade levels as well um most recently between the 1920 and 2021 2022 school year we saw an uptick of about 436 additional students um so our numbers in this area continue to grow the good news is is in terms of staffing you know we have added quite a bit in elementary over over the last couple of years so we've stabilized somewhat in that area but as those numbers move up and the students move in um we're seeing a little bit of a of a need to increase stopping um in the in the higher grade levels um so uh in general okay that's fine thanks um and gentlemen we'll talk a little bit about where those students fall in this chart as well um so here you can see the number of sections and i want to clarify kate i know you uh jotted a question down uh regarding um this total the total student capacity and the percent capacity and i just want to clarify that um so just to back up a little bit you can see that the number of sections that are represented for k-5 are actually representing the core classroom teachers so mrs smith in grade two at a school is one of those sections when you add up all of those sections across the district that's the amount of sections that we currently have representing the the current middle the current elementary schools um the second column are the projected numbers of students and so those are the students based on the based on this year's enrollment moving forward rolling up we expect to see in those seats the total student capacity is the next column so that's how many students we can accommodate within for example in kindergarten those 47 sections um first grade for example 1056 um can fill the 48 sections that we have there and so on and so forth the percent capacity is really just the number of the the uh the number of the projected students and then what we have in terms of the the number of sections and so you can see them in kindergarten and first grade a little bit tighter when you get down to grade three it we have a little bit more room um not necessarily a lot of room but we definitely have some room to to to look at how those sections fall out the high enrollment projection uh is really based on if you remember we did a demographic study that was updated in april of 2021 and that's what the demographers predicted at the time on our high enrollment projections that we would see and you can see in kindergarten in second grade that we have already exceeded the high enrollment projection um so we have to look closely at those areas there and then of course the percentage of high uh capacity of the high is listed to the right and so just to clarify kate the um the percent capacity isn't representative of the amount of space that we have in each school per se but rather the actual seats chart you know seats of students available in a particular classroom represented by those numbers of sections it does not include special area classrooms it does not include intervention classrooms uh the classrooms that are needed for special education or esl which is very much growing uh in fact so of this um in the second column if you look at the total 5407 projected students for next year of that 2307 are esl students who will all need services um and therefore you know appropriate staff and classroom space with which to provide those services so i hope that that clarifies um across in terms of the spacing of the of the school we are we are quite full okay any questions there all right and then um one of the questions that kate also had mentioned uh was it was why don't we have that type of granular level uh data for the the secondary level um it is available and it can be done we just happen to do um the sections and the percent capacity so detailed this year um if you remember because we were trying to open up dpc we had to comb through every single classroom every single seat to see how we were going to configure uh to configure that school and also to understand what the remaining space was was left in each of those uh remaining of the of the schools of that they were coming from and so for the middle school um curtin project enrollment you could see that in sixth grade we have a total of 927 the projected was 939 7th grade 952 with a projection of 992 and then in eighth grade 976 with a projection of 952 so our total current students is 28.48 are projected for next year is 28.83 okay next next side please thank you and uh similarly we're growing at the high school um our current projected uh our current enrollment from ninth grade 1181 the projected is 9.79 and 10th grade 839 the projected is 11.78 and 11th grade is 702 with a projected of 842 and then the current 412th is 781 with a projected of 714 for a total of 3503 projected for next year rolling up is and i remember correctly our high school capacity was around building capacity was around 3370 so we are well over that that number so um that is we are definitely growing there and there are students currently still in the registration process as well coming daily thank you thank you this is the one that kim's most excited about hiring all of these new people one way or the other um cam can you talk to us about staffing [Music] sure um just to give you some idea um we currently have about a thousand um teachers on staff and um i did see there was a question in the q a i think from theresa we don't have a cap on staff hiring at the teacher or administrator level we do have some non-certified um contracts that require us to cap part-timers but we do not have that kind of restriction on these two categories of teachers and administrators so what we endeavor to do is we're doing staffing is we try to match as carefully as we can the kind of the least number of teachers that we can make fit the jigsaw puzzle it's particularly challenging at the secondary level and that's where we're going to focus tonight at the elementary level it's clear if we have to open a section of a grade level we hire a grade level teacher and we push in ancillary either content areas like art music and pe or related services at the secondary level it's a little bit trickier because we're talking about electives we're talking about graduation requirements and we're talking about schedules that are very much in flux and so we have to be a little bit more careful about how we build the puzzle so this slide speaks to staffing increases that are needed at the high school to handle increasing enrollment as well as the 25 credit mandate the graduation requirements so you can see here as we go down the list 1.2 art teachers and the reason for the fraction is that it's not a pure 1.0 that we need but we need a 1.0 plus a little bit so it might be covering a section right now what we try to do is we try to make sure that we hire in the 1.0 but we do have circumstances where you might hear us refer to overloads at the high school and what that means is we may have just one section lingering out there or we may have a persistent vacancy and so the remaining teachers in that department will assume responsibility for one of the classes of that vacancy so that's why you'll see some fractions here or you'll hear us refer to overloads at the high school so 1.2 art teachers one business teacher one health and pe teacher one world language teacher the 0.8 are the overages i was just referring to so that might not be a whole teacher in for example art it might be that we need to make the schedule work one english section one spanish section so we're cobbling together some over overage assignments and then a 1.0 science teacher and the costs um really look to where we generally hire in teachers um we are seeing fewer and fewer teachers at the ba level and more and more at the m a or master's level so you're seeing numbers that reflect that so that's a total of six ftes for that um enrollment increase coverage of sections and also to meet the sections that we need in order to be able to offer students sufficient classes so that they can meet their graduation requirements on time next side please similarly because of the rapid growth that you've or the persistent growth that you heard dr casemiro described for our english language learners we continue to see large numbers of increased staffing needs in order to be sure that all of these students for whom we have an obligation to provide this particular kind of service are going to be able to get it with a certified staff member so you see year over year the numbers of ell requests for staffing particularly at the high school and middle school levels continue to grow in order to meet those students that are coming through the system and new students that are arriving so their request is for five at the high school this year um five at the middle school level and one additional at the elementary school level who that's typically someone who will be assigned to different schools they may do they may cover two or three or even four schools with um a section in each location at the elementary level so those folks tend to be more travelers and that would be for a total of 11 ell dedicated enrollment or staffing and then um you heard kelly talk about the staffing to support special education enrollment and again she has laid out over the last couple of years plans for a gradual increase in some of the ancillary service or people services that we provide so um one additional social worker is part of that plan and 2.5 additional counselors those are part of the growth plan and also part of this commitment that we've made to sel to social emotional learning and support for students particularly important in the postcovid period that we're in now so that's part of both the gradual increase as well as meeting these other goals that we've set for ourselves with dedication to those needs one slp speech and language pathologist those are folks who have very large case loads and serve students with our provide students with services required by their ieps so that's one additional in order to help meet the growing demand for those services and then you see five special education teachers um those are spread across the district and we work pretty closely with kelly in hr to get her the the kind of special ed teacher that she needs it might be a teacher in a resource room it might be a teacher in their bas program it might be an elementary teacher so we work with her to try to make sure that we can find sufficient staffing to fill those gaps and sometimes if for example there's other services that she needs we might work with her to try to find that staffing as well so she's allocated five um new ftes and that's to cover um as we said increasing demand but caused by increasing enrollment and increasing service needs and staffing to support middle school enrollment again you can see and this is across the groups there's two art teachers one health teacher and one music teacher for a total of four and again this is to try to accommodate really growing middle school populations and making sure that those students are getting all of those particular areas in order to do that we need to push in additional staffing just to cover and make sure that we meet contractual requirements for class responsibilities and by that i mean some of these folks can teach up to 125 or 130 students so we're trying to balance caseload if you will with class size so these additional supports will be put into the middle school so summing all of that up um total staffing for the high school at six ftes total staffing for our ls at 11 total staffing for special education 9.5 and total staffing for middle school enrollment at four for a total of 30.5 new ftes at a total cost of 2.2 million dollars estimated thank you kim mike kevin may i ask you a question real quick of kim on that kim that staffing is that's to meet both enrollment expectations and the high school uh accreditation issues that we need to do with it with the new credit requirement correct that's forgets to address both of those issues yes okay thank you may i also ask a question please can you mention that the special education teachers are going to be district-wide um the social worker counselor positions are those also district-wide or um kelly i want i don't know if you want to address that i can answer that um social worker position is um due at the high school and that is driven by iep needs of students that are there um the counselor positions um as you guys know we have been trying between middle and high school to increase school counselor capacity and reduce their caseloads to support students um so we are projecting those at the secondary level so from grades 6 through 12 we will reevaluate um closer to the end of the year the actual enrollment that's in the buildings to determine the best placement to put them because we would love to give one additional to each building but we know that this is part of a multi-year plan um the high school will definitely get a portion of that staffing just due to their needs right now um and then we will also look to support the middle schools where we can thank you so bye much quick question uh in the high school numbers the 35 to 3 700.

they're there for different programs that we have going on but that's what the late bus is um we don't have six that we had a total of um late bus runs uh as you can see on a given day we might have uh five or six or seven uh not six hundreds just the way i i put it in the chart and they're eighty-two dollars a day too so at the bottom you see um there are in addition to our 83 buses there's another 14 buses that just do non-public schools uh immaculate and some of the parochial elementary schools there's 14 same price as we pay for those but that's a million dollars and then early release days that really are attributed to their early releases we think there were 15 days that they don't have as many buses as we do 14 so there's the math going across so those are separate categories that's the way the state of connecticut wants it reported at the end of the year and those numbers appear right in the line item budget that we talked about earlier and then the next slide mike is the special education um a little there it's just a little um there are more things going on um at the top there are type two uh that's what they call the mini buses the the 16 passengers we have 32 of those same 180 days the contract for them is next year i get the question a lot why don't the smaller buses cost less why do they cost more they're smaller there's less steel but that's what they cost when you buy them they cost more money and that's passed on back to us wc that's a wheelchair lift bus um you know a lift in the back a door we have seven of those uh same thing 180 days they're a little more expensive um we have some dale i apologize i didn't have more description there but we have some programs in special ed that run every day uh that take kids to different it might be a job a work training site or a site where they can improve their skills for later on in life and and just things like that we have uh 12 of those that go out every day they don't cost as much because generally that's um in the middle of the day and the bus is paid for the next two are really kind of transition programs that you know we have to educate our special education youngsters from ages 18 to 21.

the energy commission had a committee that over the course of about a year in 2018 research what other cities including austin and portland have done met with our local realtors and drafted the ordinance there had been hope that this ordinance would be have been acted in 2019 there's been a series of reasons put forth as to why this hasn't been the case including the desire to enact it as a package with the commercial disclosure and the green and rental housing initiatives since the commission commercial and multi-family disclosure ordinance was enacted in october of last year something else seems to have happened although the additional conversation with realtors was supposed to have taken place last summer or before they seem to have only started this month the current draft of the ordinance is virtually the same as it was in 2018 with only minor wording and organizational changes it is now not planned to be passed in 2000 until 2023 according to the presentation to be shown tonight 1200 homes are sold in ann arbor each year uh would be evaluated in 250 homes or so would be retrofitted homes only come on the market over periods of time and each year that goes by without this ordinance being passed those homes may not get to be evaluated until sometime in the 2030s the additional co2 put into the atmosphere due to the loss of these improvements will stay in the atmosphere for at least seven generations i strongly earn the commission to pass resolution recommending that this council enact this ordinance immediately it's ready to go don't let another 1200 homes be missed thank you i think we lost missy for a second she was frozen so we're going to have to wait a second until she's able to rejoin to tell us if there's other callers here she comes john yes while we're waiting tonight um wayne mentioned a resolution is he asking us to create a resolution in support of it or has there been resolution already put forth that we're um going to be considering or should have considered so i i don't know for sure to my knowledge no resolution has been prepared i don't think so that's something we would have to talk about as a commission later in the meeting if um that's necessary desirable um et cetera so that's right thank you okay thank you mark welcome back i'm back i hate internet i apologize everyone um and thanks public speaker we have one more hand up caller ending in one three four thank you dr stultz and chair mursky this is ken garber 28 haverhill court i share mr appleyard's dismay at the herd ordinance delays the heat pump discussion got me thinking about thermal dynamics indulge me here the second law of thermodynamics states that the total disorder or entropy of the universe is constantly increasing and that someday everything will come to a complete stop but it's not total futility the law implies that any system not in equilibrium not at maximum entropy can be made to do useful work two centuries ago the french physicist savi carno imagined a heat engine that could harness the flow of heat from a hot chamber to a cold chamber it's not heat that drives the heat engine but the difference in temperature between two chambers which is converted to work that's how steam engines worked in carnos day they didn't just push a piston with hot air heat engines can never be 100 efficient because you can't convert all the heat energy to mechanical energy but just as you can use a heat difference from hot to cold to drive work the second law says you can use work to move heat from cold to hot this is the principle of a refrigerator or a heat pump they're the same thing amazingly carno's theorem shows that a heat pump can be more than 100 efficient much more a modern heat pump coefficient of performance is between two and four or two hundred percent to 400 percent more heat energy created than electrical energy expended we don't violate the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy can't be created or destroyed we're just taking the heat energy in the cold space and by adding work you move it to a hot space making it hotter the work in this case employs electricity to compress a gas which raises its temperature the refrigerator was invented in 1899 but it took a while before someone used a backwards car no heat engine to heat a living space in 1948 robert weber made a heat pump and replaced his coal furnace with it so heat pumps exploit the second law just as a system out of equilibrium can drive work through entropy we can use work to temporarily reverse the process gas furnaces on the other hand use a chemical reaction to heat air very thermodynamically inefficient you don't gain energy from burning fossil fuels you're just using the solar energy stored in ancient plant matter which we call oil gas and coal breaking their chemical bonds releases heat because fossil fuels are abundant and have a high energy density doing this is relatively cheap but it's overwhelming the earth's systems for cycling carbon that's second law too once the polar ice disappears the ice caps melt the permafrost releases all its carbon and we're finally done with fossil fuels the climate will reach a new equilibrium mission rover pack can tell you what that world will look like our task is to shift that future equilibrium to the left as far as possible it's beyond urgent so let's start by applying the second law make heat pumps universal thank you mr garber you see do we have anybody else we don't tramerski very good great so um that has a lot quicker than what it has been on many occasions last year so we are now uh pleased to be able to go to the main part of our agenda and first on the agenda is as was already mentioned um by wayne appleyard a presentation about the bryant neighborhood and its um decarbonization project along with a lot of other benefits so missy may i turn things over to you and let you introduce it absolutely well thank you all so much for the opportunity to be here today and tell you a little bit about the bryant project you are not going to have to hear me talk which is i guess a gift i'm sure for all of you instead we have madison case who is an americorps vista with community action network one of our important community engagement partners and derek miller's not with us tonight but i want to acknowledge community action network which is really our strategic uh cbo community-based organization helping to move this project forward so uh surprise john very was very generous our legislative system went down uh actually across all boards and commissions but that presented an opportunity to perhaps redo this presentation so in the attachments to the agenda you're going to see two slides one is kind of the more standard slide deck for osi we're not going to present that tonight i'm happy to answer questions about it madison is going to present this project from community action network's perspective so madison welcome to the energy commission it's a pleasure to have you and i'm going to turn it over to you now thank you so much missy the pleasure is all mine i assure you um so i did not have a virtual base job during the pandemic so bear with me on my screen sharing abilities let me pull that up for you all right does that look good for everyone awesome thank you so much well as missy said my name is madison case i'm an americorps vista for the community action network um previous to can i worked in the corporate retail industry so um i have an operations background in the food industry as well so this this work um is incredibly important to me and always has been and it's been a delight to move back into more community-based work and get to work on this project i'm going to go over a couple different things my presentation first just the basic project goal um you know why canada's involved why bryant is an important community to be recognized some of the efforts we're going through i'm going to focus on three different topics community outreach climate change and resilience public health as i might make a typo on that one and human services next steps and questions i didn't feel the need to parse out any challenges along the way as well i'll talk about those as i go through each one of the slides i don't think any challenges should be removed from the ability to move forward in any of our work either so just let me know if you have questions along the way but i did take some time at the very end so first and foremost the project goal is to create the first decarbonized existing neighborhood in our um we want to make sure that it's a replicable model throughout the rest of the area but also ensuring that we're meeting people where they're at with sustainability that means ensuring that all of our goals our aspirations and our strengths are coming from the residents themselves sustainability is something that means something different for everyone and that's something we've really seen is trying to move forward with with this project some of us like those of you here think sustainability is something that um is more maybe of an academic point of view or professional point of view but as we start to trickle down into different communities that may mean something different for everyone um and at the end of the day we want to ensure that we're using the residents and their strengths whether or not it's personal it's their community outreach abilities or just their general interest and excitement about this moving forward to garner them nonprofits like us and other government organizations like osi working together to create a healthy environment and neighborhood but on top of that first and foremost we want to ensure that we are combining both the climate change crisis social justice to create our climate justice along the way so why the bryant neighborhood um the bryant neighborhood is a frontline neighborhood which means that at first and foremost it's going to bear the forced climate consequences as we go through the climate change crisis um neighborhoods that are historically underserved or under resourced are going to be hit the hardest and you know bearing that name or don't have the resources to move forward and make the changes that might make them more sustainable so starting where it's most needed is incredibly important when it comes to this work um the a couple different demographics about the bryant neighborhood here um about 50 of our neighborhood is of color um we have 75 percent of our residents are low income the bryant neighborhood was actually the first i want to say the first affordable housing area not necessarily as um you know apartment-style living but as housing style living in ann arbor uh with about 260 homes built in the 1970s um they're 50 50 split and breath with renter occupied but we do have a very energy burdened neighborhood um and we want to ensure that while um you know we're taking that burden off of our neighborhood that we're doing in a way that can be replicated across the rest of ann arbor as well so again why can why is it important that we work with community action network when we're coming to the bryant neighborhood we have an incredibly long standing relationship with the community this um the brian community center as its own has been around since around the 1980s but it's been owned and operated by cans since the 2000s and one thing that we see is incredibly important when working with our communities is having long-standing resources there not just within just having the community center but also having staff that is there for a really long time with the amount of change that happens in some of these neighborhoods and communities we want to ensure that we are a very reliable um source of trust of resources and anything that goes along with having someone that you um no one understand in our neighborhood um here i have pictured skye who is our community center director he's been with us for over a decade at the bryant community center so you can imagine the amount of um not just access he has to the community but the amount of trust and just availability and understand and love for the community there um you know when you're there for a decade and you work with students and with kids and with families you see your families flourish and you know you have someone from kindergarten through their entire way through high school i mean there's a lot of of trusted compatibility that you have with someone there that long and i think a really great side tangent story is that that's crystal our community outreach specialist that works for community action network but skye is actually the godfather for her child so if that shows you how important our relationships were are with the community and crystal lives in the bryant neighborhood it's just it's incredibly important and we see that our three pillars of service are educational enrichment food food assistance and housing security so we do act as a human resource basket in a way for the neighborhood we help them communicate with dte we help them communicate with any other bill payments they have and not in a way to make sure that we're solving all of any solving any issues or helping them work to it we want to ensure that we are not canceling the problem out and helping them thrive you know and work on their own and stand on their own as well our food assistance programs are are through our food pantry and we're actually the largest food pantry in washington county we tend to have around 600 clients per week throughout the pandemic we allow people to come more than once per week or whenever it was needed because we saw the need was that high but even now with families just coming once per week we're still seeing around the same amount of demand which just shows you how much it's needed in the area and as far as educational enrichment goes we have our programs that are after school program summer program but it's all year round um it's a it's a year-round curriculum so they have a theme every year next year it's environmental um sustainability so we're really excited to bring a lot of the work that we're doing in this project trickle down from not only just parents and families but down to the kids um let's see going on so one of the things that we have been working on specifically are you know one of our three topics is community outreach which obviously for a project like this is going to be key not only in creating a base of that trust for you know my work in the neighborhood crystals work in the neighborhood but also just us you know getting a basis of understanding of where people are at with sustainability as well um we have um me and crystal doing mailers and monthly events um in the neighborhood we started out with door knocking though um and and you know i know all of you are familiar in some capacity with the policy world um and you know any world of community outreach but that has really been our most successful form of outreach so far because that face-to-face interaction really has created a amount of trust and understanding with us because while crystal's lived in the neighborhood for her entire life she grew up there she still doesn't know all of the residents and i know none of the residents and i want to ensure that my face uh triggers trust and understanding or at least just an interest in the program and wanting to ask questions because they they don't need to trust me right away they don't need to trust crystal but they at least we're hoping that they want to ask questions and be more interested in the program um some of the monthly events that we've been also to have been able to have face-to-face conversations with residents through are our community clean up every year we bring about three 30-yard dumpsters into the neighborhood and allow residents to come down throw if they need to away and then come to the community center afterwards for food and so then we were able to capture quite a few residents in an initial survey that we did trying to engage the demographics of the neighborhood their interest in being a part of our our surveys our you know just email lists and other parts of our just general outreach program but we're also able to get a lot of dte information from residents there as well which is going to help us gain a lot more information about their actual energy use in their homes so the community cleanup was great next year we're actually working with missy and osi to ensure that we do it in a more sustainable way so we're not only going to get our open tops but we're also going to bring in a few more um uh waste diversion friendly open tops in to ensure that we're making sure the electronics are going to the right place our um uh you know plastics whatever so on so forth and that's actually what i did in my recent ch my past job for um this with kroger so i'm really excited about that in the future uh we also did a tree planting in the fall as well and that was incredibly successful with the neighborhood it's also again a face-to-face interaction with a staff member of osi we have other volunteers in the city of ann arbor um and some of those were 82-0 ambassadors and we were excited to have those ambassadors there as well um but outside of that they're also helping us with a couple other projects along the way i'm actually an ambassador too so outside of my time at can i've been with i know snaps for that time with osi but um it's been really exciting to get to know other people that have a passion for sustainability in ann arbor but then also bring other professionals that have a very specified interest and sustainability into this project so with the rank uh the brian project we have the availability now to you know work with one of our team architects work with um people that have interest in the school systems and about you know that very type of sustainability interest that um not only was part of the tree planting but that going forward are going to be a part of a bunch of different facets of this project but specifically more in our home assessments which i'll get to later um we hosted a master gardening class at the bryant community center not just for residents but osi did their training there too so using the center really is an area for people to see as a community structure not just for the brine community but that the city sees it as a very valid space to be used in the area as well and i think that helps garner productivity not just for thinking the community center is a space for people who have need but also have an interest that's one of our challenges that we've seen going forward is that people see the community center as a very you know low income you know we don't we don't want to use this space because we don't have an income based need or you know food we're not food insecure those types of area so we're wanting to ensure people see bcc is an area that everyone is welcome and that everyone has a valid reason to go there so that was one of the pieces that we use that for and then we have an upcoming valentine's day event with small themes like love your home love your planet um that we're going to use as sustainability like and with the theme of sustainability um you know not just with our families but also introduce it with the kids and start start moving forward with the with the thematic curriculum for the year um we've also done some mailers uh my next slide is just some of those examples uh you can see me and crystal doing some door knocking over there um on the left side these are just the front pages of both of these as well so they're not in full in full form um but we did have em live come out and do an article about the area too or we were fortunate enough that m live was interested enough to do an article about our work um so they came out and took some professional pictures which have been really great for us as far as our outreach has gone because we have you know we're involved in more of an official capacity and then we can link people to um a more official sign up in an area that people can trust too because mli obviously is an incredibly trustworthy source for a lot of michiganders when they read their news and then in the middle i have our newsletter here that has events coming up our you know our overview of our project the um contact information if they want to learn more but on the back it has um summaries of events that we've had in the past and some sort of um educational component just to kind of walk people through um a sustained uh a sustainable understanding of what like what verbiage we're using when we're talking to i don't want to talk about weatherization and electrification if no one knows what i'm talking about um and that's been a part of the challenges of understanding where people are at with sustainability as well is we might not use the same words for similar things um and then also we went to the green fair and had a booth there this year and then the one on the far right for event outreach is what we use there all right so moving on to climate change and resilience i do have a photo here of our community cleanup that was um everyone that came out for the community there um but one of the first things i want to talk about is bcc as a resilience hub we do have our north side community center at community action network already outfitted for solar panels and is a resilience hub for the city of ann arbor already so um we're excited to bring bcc in as another one of those for our company and already have had you know the experience of going through that edge as well so it really lends it as an easier task and with bryan community center being the largest food pantry in washington county it really opens up not just food security stabilization for our community but also the rest of ann arbor and washington county as i stated but you know when we're looking at food security and other things that create sustainable environments for people to help them thrive we should be looking outside of bryant anyway but we're excited to be able to service our neighborhood and a couple other things are that we've seen that come with their own challenges that are part of our home evaluations our weatherization electrification which would be the end game opportunities for us to be able to address when it comes to our home assessment so i'm going to go a bit out of order here but right now one of our biggest things that we're working on is home energy evaluations we have two different options for residents we first have a virtual self-evaluation option that's completed with a staff member from can elevate or the a20 ambassadors or osi we have quite a plethora of people that are getting trained to do this which we're very excited about um and we love just having that again a very different and diverse professional background interest of sustainability the resident is paid with a 50 visa gift card and this is all done over the phone um and we've done a couple practice rounds and also have a tr a training video already made because we did a virtual out of crystal stewards our outreach specialist home so if anyone has any questions that's a part of something that we can default to in the process and also allows residents to see how it's done you know gives them again a little bit more trust in the program and what we're doing and it's a little less invasive one of the challenges that we've seen with our in person as i'll get to comprehensive evaluations is that they are inside of their homes about two hour long two hour long services you're not paid for them up front although they are valued around 300 um but residents do find that a little bit invasive um we've seen in the area that residents are worried about you know that the state of their home um you know whether that's cleanliness or need to have updates on their homes um or they're you know we've been home ridden as a society for two and a half years at this point i think we all have things that we are a little bit worried about when it comes to how we're living right now um but obviously that's very accentuated in um under-resourced communities so some of the things that we're looking for going back to weatherization electrification when we go into our homes is um you know do we need to make any basic repairs on these homes you know is there a hole in the roof and that's why someone's not interested in sustainability i mean i um that's one of the very specific examples that has really hit home for us is that you know we want to go in and talk about you know changing their stows and you know getting into like different discussions of um you know electrifying their house so they can get solar panels someday but that's not important to someone who has really basic needs like getting their getting their roof fixed getting installation fixed up and obviously those things all lend themselves to sustainability so we want to ensure that we're making homes comfortable for everyone as well we've really we started you know a part of that too as our language towards these evaluations is there we want to say their home energy evaluations for comfort and then in addition sustainability we even started out using the word audit and that was not a fan favorite so we've moved on from that too um no one's interested in audits you know i'm not i don't think most people are so um that's been an interesting understanding for this as well so big picture when we go into people's homes is that we can gather data and then connect them with additional resources that might be available um so using our home assessments results we can um you know re reduce the energy used by creating um you know using weatherization tools like i stated there's some other programs that we're able to connect them with that can help with those big repairs on my um you know in their roofs and their insulation any big things that they might need windows any things like that um we're using thermal imaging tools when we go into the homes for those more comprehensive evaluations the home assessments that we're doing that are self-evaluations do have a little bit of wiggle room with what um what materials and electronics that we can bring in um but for the most part that's something that you really need a professional to come and do the imaging tools are um different i think we can get some of those in the future but as far as um you know assessing how much air is leaving your home through your window we do have a lot more like comprehensive tools that we're using for the in-person ones um and our end game for this too is obviously electrifying the homes to encrypt that make them more efficient um we you know we spent about 90 percent of our time indoors and electric stoves um versus a gas stove i'm at about 50 to our gas stove emits about 50 to 400 percent more nitrogen than a get an electric stove would so it's far more healthy for our families to be inside their homes if we were to make a change like that but also doing in the math scale allows us to you know possibly get buyer discounts and really make physical changes to someone's home which will increase the trust tenfold in a project like this and one thing that we are using is wanting to use um like an improvement guide for the homes too so if we go into a home and they have x problem we want to ensure that we link them with the correct like resource in michigan that might help them whether or not it's a weatherization tool but um just kind of being a human services hub as we are at bcc but ensuring that if we're going to a home we're addressing issues as we see them because nothing's worse than seeing a problem and walking right by it that decreases trust in an instant and they never want to be a part of this project so um that's something that we're working on right now as well just to kind of have a you know someone like me or someone i'm training in the future especially it can look at the guide and say oh they have a hole in the roof or they have issues with their windows go to this resource and we can help find them funding all right and then our third one here is public health and human services like i said we want to be able to connect them with other resources in ann arbor or michigan that might already be doing work like this because we're not you know while this going fully decarbonized in a neighborhood is a very novel idea helping residents with issues in their home is not so some of the things already being offered in the city of ann arbor are aging in place and that requires a home evaluation for sustainability so we would already be doing part of that initial assessment to get older folks in our neighborhood which is a pretty decent amount of our neighborhood connected with a resource that would help make those market changes um to their homes and help them feel more comfortable and then i as i already spoke out we have weatherization as an option as well for people that has already you know already happening so we want to ensure that we're not remaking the wheel in a way that it doesn't need to happen we want to ensure that we're also being collaborative with our work too um we work with our residents on communication with dte and other providers just to ensure that they can make their bills they're not being evicted they never get any of their resources turned off during the winter during the summer you know always we want to ensure that they're as comfortable as possible and their needs are being met that's something we're already doing but once we get more of this information we'll be able to do that tenfold i have an example of some of the information we're able to get at the bottom but what we can get in a residence um uh like online profile in dt is pretty comprehensive um and we have um quite a compilation of their work too so we can see what the whole neighborhood is using as well which helps us a lot in our data collection um also helping renters negotiate changes with landlords because we do have a 50 50 split with our neighborhood while some of them own that some residents own their homes and are you know obviously able to make the decision to be a part of this program maybe not able to you know have the resources to do so but landlords are very um or have been a little bit hesitant to do some of the evaluations to remember or to make changes because they may not be able to to the neighborhood while our home assessments don't change anything in their homes they're not trying to sell you anything those are just for information basis or on an information basis um we do want to ensure that landlords know about all of that and we can help renters get this evaluation done and then negotiate with their landlords to you know either provide incentives for them to make these changes but also ensure that their renters being treated fairly as well but we also have a lot of ecological benefits for the neighborhood health but going forward with this project it's not just about electrifying our homes our tree ten thousand trees initiative through ann arbor has also benefited brian as i said earlier in our tree planting um this allows our community to get free trees um you know throughout the entirety of this program and it takes away invasive species and it also just allows our neighborhood to feel more comfortable and more like a community um and one of the things that has been historically an issue the bryant neighborhood is flooding um and some of the things that we've been working on um are rain gardens we have one in front of bcc but the master gardening class that was held was actually specific to rain gardens um so that gives our residents the knowledge that they need to um create a rain garden in their home or in their neighborhood wherever they see fit to allow them to have some sort of like personal representation um in uh moving forward with that um but then some of our next steps that we have are creating um a very specific communication strategy with the neighborhood so it can be easily replicated in the rest of the neighborhoods that can can influence which again is another huge bonus for canned working on this project is bryant is just one of six community centers we have seven ones in a school but we have six community centers that um influence their own sets of communities brian's the only one that doesn't work specifically with the ann arbor housing commission a lot of the other ones are a lot of our other community centers are inside specific units in the neighborhoods they might be influencing 16 to 30 families but that's still 16 to 30 families in the city of ann arbor and while brian might be on the biggest scale it's going to be way easier to replicate in neighborhoods that we have more influence over um so create a communication strategy because you know i'm not going to be here forever crystal's not going to be here forever so we want to ensure that all of our other employees and other people that hop in on this project from any other area are able to go forward with this um we're working on itemized rosters for community interest um so you know while we have resources to do home assessments we need to ensure that we have people signed up for them or on a waiting list to go forward as well and have their availability um and we are saying too as we find more funding opportunities that a lot of the funders will come in and ask if we have interest already and are waiting for it so we don't want to have a situation where we get funding and don't have the people in line in order to take part in any of the any of the initiatives um we do have two families waiting on solar fitting for their houses right now too while i mentioned solar and queen to interest which is very very exciting um but still some apprehension from the neighborhood so you know while again i would jump at any opportunity to get solar for my home i think it's very different for everyone what they feel comfortable with so we're really excited that we were able to move forward with that too some of our current funding opportunities that we're working with or that are you know lines in the fire are the mcknight foundation which we have gotten money from in this past year but it ends i want to say in about a month but we've already reapplied for that foundation so we should be seeing um we already feel like we have a very positive feedback with them because it's a continued grant um but we get our formal it responds here soon we're working with solar moonshot the trowbridge foundation the j40 fund the j40 fund is specific to energy work in underserved neighborhoods um that work with a government enterprise and a non-profit so we are a very good fit for this so i have my fingers crossed for them as well an epa grant to deal with doe weatherization and leap so we have a lot of opportunities here going forward for funding not just for community resources but also hoping to get someone here on full-time employment or at least part-time employment um so then someone like me or someone like crystal can have the the ability to stay here longer on a different basis because my best year is only one year but the hope would be that i would stay on to the project longer or that crystal would be able to take on you know greater responsibilities like i stated earlier it's great to have a lot of people involved but having the same people creates a lot more trust for the neighborhood all right but that's all i have so if you have any questions feel free to jump in but thank you so much for having me um i have a question from mark cleavy so i have uh two questions um one of them i i very much appreciate the messaging difficulties between audit and assessment but i also um having run a lot of these programs myself at the state and local levels know that um using a standardized audit methodology is is essential to getting funding from michigan saves and and so those so i guess my question is not so much concern what you're calling it but you know are you using a standardized methodology industry accepted methodology that you know reputable financial institutions would would recognize like michigan saves because their loans require that the assessment either solar assessment or energy efficiency upgrade assessment that assessment be included in the loan packaging um so are you are you using a standardized methodology for these assessments well i think part of the messaging that we like what we're focused on is just ensuring that the residents are more um like gauging how a resident will respond to the wording if we have any funder that needs it to be out like you know uh what's the word i'm looking for um worded in a specific way we still call them audits amongst ourselves um or assessments you know here and there sometimes it's evaluation we really have focused on evaluation for the area um as far as residents go because that has seemed to work the best and we get the most responses um but in our like cool conversations between like me and osi we've been using assessment but like to answer your question point blank if someone needs it to be called something else as long as the structure is there and it looks like what they need it to be as far as what an audit includes or the assessment includes we are our verbiage stands is whatever the funder would need okay yeah mark can i pick up that really quick because there's new ones here i think one is that all of the the assessments whether it's virtual or of course if we have a home energy you know auditor coming in they actually do meet the home energy score requirements but it's plus it's and there's so much more that the neighbors have identified and second a lot of these households are not going to be eligible for machine safes products which michigan saves is one of our collaborators they are economically out of the lending space version so we're trying to fix that with a lot of the grants workers doing okay so great uh second thing is this issue that's come up between the environmental commission and the energy commission since since i've been at it has to do with tree planting so i love the 10 000 tree planting um my question is given the fact that you're trying to do solar and some of the people in the neighborhood have obviously wanted to do solar and i've done solar assessments in that neighborhood myself as well as larry and others is the decision being made every time someone plants a tree is that siding is that uh solar access being taken into consideration because we can you know do an awful lot of damage uh you know what basically if you want to do solar when we throw people in into the lap of dte is their only option by covering up their roof with a tree um i think you know we're shooting ourselves in the foot so is that happening is that um somebody making a decision yes we're going to plan tree and we're going to plant here instead of there solar access is it being protected i'll put that question to missy because i'm not personally involved in the 10 000 trees initiative yeah it's a really good question and i'll say that we haven't approached it yet because we we've only done the tree planting we did is uh the 10 000 trees you're familiar with we have the free tree giveaway this is the community tree planting and which these are big trees you know like 150 300 sized trees so we only planted 20 of them in the neighborhood and i don't think any of the placements because i was on site doing tree planting would interfere with solar access based on like we planted far off to the side as opposed to like impacting southern exposure but i think your point is a good one that we need to integrate that as we do more of these events so when i raised this point um you know six or seven years ago at the beginning and several times other the answer i've gotten back um from previously from matt naught and others um on the energy environmental commission is well it's not something we have to worry about because we can just do community solar and as of today i checked there's no consumer community solar law passed in michigan um and i is doubtful we will have one so this issue of uh you know being sure that we're not disrupting uh distributed generation isn't just philosophy it's not just a nice thing it is we have an opportunity to expand our tax dollars to in the words of chairman mursky optimize the impact we make on climate change um and so i think we need to you know be sure that we're not shooting hurting ourselves doing doing something i'm all for tree planting i love the idea but i'm also also want to see the sustainable energy utility work and if we start covering up roofs um we're not going to be doing ourselves any favors and bryant neighborhood is an ideal candidate for a community solar project underneath a sustainable energy utility so thank you i apologize for the background racket here at the office but um thanks for the presentation madison well done um i also a big supporter of bryant in fact i have two children that went to bryant elementary i did probably one of the first energy audits of the school didn't have very good results i remember that and getting into the dispute with the school board a little bit on that but um i just wanted to say you know the goals look great i just hope that you're documenting things as you know the greenhouse gas emission inventory the baseline that you start with from a decarbonization point of view needs to be very carefully built so that you have some place to go from and i trust you're working really hard on getting the boundary conditions laid out um if there's anything we can do at the energy commission level to help in that front um there's some of us that have been in that space and can help you in that world i'm sure osi's involved very greatly as well and anything we can do to help is good just kind of curious what your timeline is you mentioned you want to be the first decarbonized community have you defined what that means and what the timeline is to achieve that yeah i think our goal is five years missy can jump in on this one too um i know that it's uh five years is our main goal for that but as far as um itemizing what things we get done in each of those years i think there's work still to be done and what that looks like but it's also very fluid with our interest in how we get out in the community as well but i'll let missy continue that if there's more specifics that i um can't answer madison's right 2027 is the aspirational goal that we have okay a lot of heavy lifting let us know what we can do to help absolutely thank you so much any other questions i i have a very quick one hopefully could you give us um maybe a one or two minute overview of the community action network um i heard the organization but that is it and maybe there's others on the call too that are as still informed as i am yeah no problem um so we are a conglomeration we are quite we're lit we're named quite aptly um we are a conglomeration of community centers across ann arbor um we have seven community centers that are standalone um or six clinics community centers that are standalone seven including the one that we have in brick elementary we span across washtenaw county because brick is in ypsilanti um we have the bryan community center is the only one that is based in the community that is of homes that are not covered by the ann arbor housing commission but then our others are um housing covered by the housing commission um and then also we are just very much so centered in that community inside of um different units that they might have we offer all three of those main pillars of work in all of our community centers we have food distributions even in our brick elementary to all of our residents they come in different days depending on the community center and the need in the community as well also based on different types of delivery methods if we can deliver to the neighborhoods um and so that one is so that's our food security station like i said bryan community cyber covers all of washington county and operates five days per week um so we see quite a few more residents and community members there um that is connected to food gatherers um that is our main form of food distribution um from them as well and we work on tonnage so the amount of residents they get determines the amount of food that we get from them our educational enrichment um is all-year-thematic curriculum we work with students in after school program and in summer camp we bring in vistas like me to work in our all year after school program but also bring in our very shortened amount of three-month um summer camp asb staff as well they're through americorps vista or through um university of michigan we get quite a few um pas from them we have a lot of social work students that come in and work at our centers and then additionally we have our um housing and human services so um housing security obviously in the centers that are covered by the commission is covered a little bit differently as it might at bryan community center um but those are our main things um we have one more pillar which is sustainability at the very end too and this project really covers that sustainability sustainable pillar we're working on that very specifically with our diversity and inclusion um programs that we're trying to not trying obviously very much so enforcing in our inclusion going forward too but we saw a need to ensure that we're not just helping communities we're trying to get people out of housing commission homes and standing on their own and being able to strive in their neighborhood and strive where they are and thrive so um we uh so that's one big thing though one of the big things that we're working on that we've recently included in one of our goals in our mission um but really those those four pillows are our biggest ones thank you very much missy go ahead you have something you have to say yeah yeah i just wanted to add one additional element of this project and of course we've focused and madison's fabulous job on the sustainability elements but it's not lost i think on many people on the line that when we're successful there will be a demand for the neighborhood and so part of what we're focusing on is how we directly confront gentrification and how we focus on intergenerational wealth accumulation and neighborhood stabilization so there are other elements of this project that are very much related to the goals that we have but it's things like if we are able to lower bills how are we helping people with financial literacy to make some investments uh to put that money aside so that they can pass that home on or how are we working with households uh to make sure they have a will so the house actually passes you know to next of kin which we sadly had a case that that didn't happen in the neighborhood and so there are other things here that we didn't necessarily talk about but i wanted to name it because it is no one has done this number one and every effort that we have seen that's made really great sustainability progress has led to some gentrification so i just i think it's worthwhile to name it thanks very much uh does anybody else have any questions for madison or missy madison thanks very much we appreciate your passion and your enthusiasm and all the great that your great work that you're doing and everybody on your team go back and tell them that uh we we're really um excited about this initiative and certainly the energy commission um as a commission but also individually and the community is there to help support you where where it's necessary and appropriate thank you so much thank you for having me today missy was there anything else on the topic or do we move now on to zach's presentation of her yeah madison would you mind stopping screen sharing that's okay no worries and then we'll move on to herd and i just wanted to share with the commission that we're working on a standardized format to update you on projects and initiatives and brian will be a recurring thing so if you want to join us for a one-off event a public engagement event or if you want to have more sustained engagement we're going to start offering that because i i think after this meeting it sounds like the commission might be interested in joining us in that work so more soon uh and with that zach can you please tell us a little bit about what's going on with the home energy rating disclosure program yeah i'd be happy to uh thank you missy thank you chairman commissioners and council members for having me um for those who i haven't met yet my name is zach i prefer him i am a community engagement specialist in the office of sustainability and i'm happy to be here tonight to present on the home energy rating disclosure let me get my screen share going is that coming through thumbs up great um so uh yeah during my time working on this initiative um it was previously known as uh the home energy audit disclosure but given the conversation we just had with madison we up too agreed that audit is not a very keen word when it comes to messaging so we changed it to help which is what another community has used is the home energy labeling program turns out that is trademarked however so that's why we landed on home energy rating disclosure so there's some good reason for the name changes um and what we're we're aiming to do with this um let's see there we go um so throughout this presentation we'll cover some of the whys and hows of the program but we'll start with what this program is intended to accomplish in ann arbor um and let's see my computer suddenly got persnickety just moments before i begin sharing so i don't know what you're seeing at this point you see slide two slide two fantastic thank you um we'll try to keep on top of that um and so what we want to accomplish with this um is first help prospective home buyers have access to information about home energy's consumption homes energy consumption before they're committed to buying it and this of course gives them a couple of different benefits but the overall goal is that we hope this will ultimately drive a market push that values um energy efficiency so while a home energy rating disclosure like this um uh this initiative officially lies within strategy three which is to transition our homes and businesses to more to being more energy efficient it also helps inform strategy 2 which is focused on electrification a little bit so this is part of a suite of initiatives that we're working on and some of these you might have already heard the commercial benchmarking ordinance was passed unanimously by council and that is a reporting program for buildings with 20 000 square feet or more we're also working on a green rental housing program that just wrapped up a task force which put together some policy recommendations for a rental focused policy the home energy rating disclosure will cover um non-rented buildings um and then there could likely be something similar for buildings that are smaller than twenty 000 square feet but that are commercial so this is where the herd rating falls and essentially it covers all single dwelling units either ones that sit on their own lots or what ones that are attached and so why do we need this program well um it's partly because we need let's start at the beginning and i believe most of you are so familiar with h zero plan and so that's the strategy two and three that i mentioned in here um and that's that's ultimately why we're starting down this path um because it's it's mentioned there um but it's also part of it these suite of ordinances that i mentioned um but more than that there is some uh drive for this from um the real estate community on paper when they are were assessed by the national association of realtors uh many midwest realtors found energy efficiency to be something that was valuable and certainly something that was important to home buyers when it comes to the operational costs of their homes at the same time there aren't very many realtors that are super comfortable talking about this and so focusing on home energy rating disclosure and supporting the real estate community would the intent is to address both of these to bring forward the information that the home buyers would like to see while also helping the realtors to feel informed and know how to educate home buyers on this um so who benefits from something like a herd initiative um well a lot of us uh increased consumer literacy uh when when more home buyers understand um what they're buying generally that can lead to increased consumer action so it informs them about what sort of performance and energy costs and cost-effective energy improvements they could make on their homes uh it also drives economic development there will be job creation and local investment of energy savings um as we start to see the demand for energy efficiency unfold and there's also um community development by uh instituting something like the herd initiative it clarifies and addresses some of the energy burden risk especially for low to moderate income households by giving them a more total cost of their living situation there are insights from open data that can drive innovation and inform future policies and finally it's a consumer protection for home buyers uh it it informs major purchasing decisions and the ongoing cost of home ownership so to take a closer look at some of those from the home buyers standpoint it gives them access to energy cost information before they purchase and then it gives them more cost effective energy efficiency recommendations um it lowers the energy costs which uh ideally if the action is taken which supports lower income households and then once somebody owns the house and is looking to sell it it increases their opportunity to showcase their cost-effective efficiency upgrades um so what we can see sometimes are increased values uh associated with homes that have high energy scores um and what what's key to that is that it doesn't devalue homes that have lower energy scores so similarly to something like the benchmarking ordinance it's an additive value in the real estate community homes with energy scores tend to sell faster and so that's that's helpful for real estate agents who rely on the sale of homes for their income it also allows real estate agents to provide a better service to their customers because home buyers will feel more secure in their huge investment and it also sort of standardizes a method of discussing energy performance with clients uh kind of creates a more of a comfortable space for those conversations to happen uh and then the community also benefits because of course the continued reduction of carbon emissions from buildings uh promotes a healthier safer and more comfortable community and it increases the quality of the housing stock as well um so i believe that most of you are somewhat familiar perhaps with a home energy score um but just to give you a quick overview of how how that works the home energy score is uh established by the us department of energy so this is a pretty standardized means of giving a metric to a home's energy performance there are often parallels drawn between a home energy score and say the miles per gallon rating of a of a standard internal combustion engine um and it just sort of standardizes the language so that when there is a number associated with it you know what it means and in a similar way that you wouldn't buy a car an internal combustion engine car anyway without knowing what kind of gas mileage it got it gets we we intend to bring that around into the home realm why would you buy a home without knowing what kind of energy efficiency rating it has and so it's a one to ten scale with five being average uh generally or using more more than 50 of of the homes um so for homeowners and sellers um the way it works to get a home energy score is that you would have a doe a department of energy certified home energy assessor come evaluate your homes total energy use and then put that assessment into a report and the home energy score report includes information um of course it's got the home energy score um and the data that's used to calculate that home energy score but it also uh includes home energy use um energy estimates for uh improvement recommendations that have a 10 year or less payback rate and if you're selling that the home energy store is included in your home's energy listing ideally under the proposed herd initiative and then that report is given to the buyer when you go to sell your home when we look at what kind of herd what kind of impact heard would have we we hope that it is huge ideally it will have a big impact um it we want it to be educating the home buyers and um helping realtors uh inform and educate folks and kind of drive that market so um the home energy score is intended to recommend certain energy efficiency upgrades that homeowners can make in their home which not only lowers their energy use and their energy costs but uh is a stronger selling point for them [Music] it makes their home more comfortable to live in if they do the upgrades there are things such as dte rebates that you can be eligible for for certain upgrades and those upgrades will be outlined in the home energy score some impacts that we've seen across the country are that the home sell quicker so in chicago for instance they spent fewer days on the market than those that didn't have um a home energy assessment and in in portland uh it informed a lot of respondents on what they might invest in in the first year uh we found that the first the projects that are chosen within the um sorry the most projects that are uh decided upon for new homeowners is are made within the first year those decisions are made pretty early on and so when you have a home energy score that's available to them when they buy the home it helps inform those decisions early on and in austin texas 12 of those actually acted upon that information um so the ac triple e which is the american council for an energy efficient economy ah got it just released a report that reveals um that moderately and severely energy burned residents increased pretty drastically in 2020 it's probably covered related um but it was already on the climb and um when i say energy burdened that means if you're moderately energy burdened that's you're spending 30 or more of your income on energy costs or severely is 50 or more of your income on energy costs um and that that um obviously is is a concern for many residents um particularly those who are low income because chances are good that they're paying more of their income towards their energy costs uh and so something like a herd initiative would help reveal more of that total cost of living sometimes you'll see that denoted as tcl in certain reports and it makes home ownership a little bit more accessible if you're getting a more complete picture out of the gate from the get-go um so there is a bit of a catch uh with with the herd and um that is that we have found that there has been some lack of expressed interest anyway from homeowners um or home buyers rather when we have we've met with a number of different agents in ann arbor and uh they have all said that um that uh there is not a lot of interest from home buyers um and they'll say that they want it but when it comes down to choosing between an energy efficient home or not usually the energy efficiency loses out um and we we believe that it's mostly because that cost benefit um of spending a little bit more money up front to get the energy efficiency uh in exchange for lower operating costs is kind of lost in translation fat communication is not clear at this point we don't believe um and and we've got this information because we've met with several agents representing like reinhardt realtors and keller williams and berkshire hathaway and howard hanna um some of the largest agencies in ann arbor uh and and i specifically chose agents who have pursued certain designations like eco broker is one designation since ecobroker was established the national association of realtors released a green designation is what they call it now and so i've met with both eco brokers and green designated realtors um because they i chose them for their understanding of the topic um and they say that while home buyers want energy efficiency they're not quite yet willing to prioritize it um and homeowners are uncertain of the benefits um [Music] and and they'll end up choosing other amenities if you will over energy efficiency i don't believe uh i don't like to refer to energy efficiency as an amenity but that's that's how it's seen pretty pretty wide pretty widely and we don't yet have a local example of success um for a similar ordinance so ann arbor area realtors are a little hesitant to be the first to make that move um and um for for instance in when portland passed theirs we saw a lot of other municipalities follow suit pretty shortly after hillsborough oregon bend eugene milwaukee but but in michigan there aren't any yet they have quite this ordinance so ann arbor would be one of the first and there's a lot of hesitancy when we talk among a lot of the agents and one thing that a lot of them mention is that though a home energy score costs roughly 150 dollars that generally isn't the final determinant for home buyers um they find that uh it there's a lot of process that's added and that is where there's a lot of hesitancy so that said um we used all of that information to sort of to inform a program uh and and how how we want to develop it um let's see here um so this is kind of a timeline for what we're working with uh starting from now this this timeline dates back a little bit to when we first started working on it and at that time we worked hard to build upon the work that was already done by this commission in the past and we also began engaging with real estate agents throughout ann arbor and we've had a number of discussions with them to date simultaneously to that we began seeking out additional resources such as national cohorts of other municipalities who were exploring similar initiatives and and work with them to kind of learn together what everyone is experiencing there has also been similar ordinances across the country that have been passed and um there are there is a lot to learn from those examples and so we've been meeting with several of those municipalities to hear about their experiences as well additionally we participated in a working group with rmi who had completed a lot of research and analysis of these other municipalities and as well as certain different policy pathways they analyzed both the successes and some of the challenges that a lot of these municipalities have faced and so as we grounded ourselves last year in the best practices research we also gained a better understanding of the perspectives held by agents here in ann arbor and by our own city's leaders and we decided to take a closer look at our approach to this work and to this initiative and based on what we have learned we decided to take a blend of a voluntary approach and a pilot and i'll talk about those a little bit more here in just a moment but those are currently in this timeline are things that we're working on fleshing out and developing and we are focusing on strategic stakeholder engagement and building some partnerships with organizations who can help us do these home energy scores and support the market that that would drive once we um have that developed and ready to go we'll we'll go ahead and launch that pilot program and and get that implemented uh later this year and we'll gather the information that we can from that pilot and do some program assessment we'll make any adjustments as necessary and then open it up for public input so that we can we can hear from the public about what they think um and what their desires are or get some feedback on the policy as it was presented uh and then move it forward to legal review and and get the ordinance um approved um and so according to this timeline we're aiming for early next year for that to have all been completed so let's take a little closer look at um sort of the program development that we've um landed on um there are similarities between the the soft launch and the phase-in of the benchmarking policy so um if for those who are familiar with the benchmarking policy or for those who aren't rather we're starting with the largest square footage buildings and we're phasing them in and we're lowering that square footage threshold so that more and more buildings are included in the policy or in the requirement year after year but that's not to stop anyone from benchmarking um right now and so that's what this voluntary soft launch would be is that we will do education and outreach to inform realtors of what they can do right now and encourage them to start getting home energy scores on homes immediately um [Music] meanwhile while we're doing that we'll do a dedicated pilot we've already identified some realtors who are interested in pursuing this that would sort of champion um taking this on and and through that process we can i identify certain hiccups and um that that might arise but more so we we believe that it will demonstrate the ease of use how simple it is to get a home energy score for homes um and and really get the word out there about the intent and they we have we're building some partnerships right now that i'll talk about in just a moment that could be offering some free or reduced assessments through through um this pilot program um and actually let's just go ahead and jump to those so walker miller is a um [Music] is a detroit based company they focus on lower income energy services they are a private entity that can set their own program qualifications and so that sets them apart from federal programs that have a qualification maximum of 200 percent the poverty level but walker miller can set whatever they want um they have a full-time auditor on staff who and and they intend to expand um and they they focus a lot on workforce development it's a core competitive competency of walker miller and so um we think that walker miller could help us educate and inform the market in terms of the home energy scores and realtor engagement there's also the green home institute they um are have a lot of expertise in issuing certificates through the green home professional um institute and home uh home energy score assessing lead accreditation they've got a ton of different certifications that they certify for and they can also help meet the demand as needed for home energy score assessors um we're also working um with the ecology center who has a a lot of experience with climate action especially when it comes to um uh policies there they've got a strong advocacy network and we believe that they could help as well uh with some of the promotion of the the work and we've already began um the communication with them and finally michigan saves uh to kind of complete the picture we want to make sure that once we have given home energy scores and informed homeowners of their their energy demand we want to connect them with funding opportunities and competent contractors who can help them do the work that they have identified in their homes um so on that note i think i'll i'll wrap it up here and see what kind of questions that we have but otherwise thank you so much for having me thank you zach uh questions for zach mark commissioner this is a question for i guess zach and and missy um i know that the sustainable energy utility unlike the detroit edison consumers energy um actually has an incentive to have their customers be more energy efficient so i would assume uh preferred from missy that energy efficiency services and and uh programs and stuff would be very important to seu so my question is missy is is the herd the tool that the seu would use to evaluate homes and would the you know standardization of the herd used across the board and for homes that receive staff city dollars and help under an seu model i heard would be it and will be at some point a powerful tool i think for the seo and whatever we're doing because it's giving us strategic information and really customized information on how we can help homeowners new homeowners make improvements in their homes that improve comfort and accessibility and then the seou if it exists is the vehicle by which we can help them make those improvements finance those improvements which is pretty exciting i'm going to take that though mark and go one additional step further that zach didn't talk about you which is we had explored with the department of energy can we pay as a city for people to get certified as home energy score raiders and the answer is no okay we're very clear that we uh you have to go through other training to get that this is an add-on and so that's sort of stymied us but here's something we can do we could eventually hire a city person that does them yeah yeah yeah right but i guess that's something right so but i guess is this the methodology in other words if you know let's say we have a a home that wants to use this solar program put solar on their house but the city's gonna going to go and do that the amount of energy that the city the homeowner uses and potentially wastes reduces the value of the investment of the city putting on so there has to be some kind of a a standard um and a you know a scale based on btus or or watts per square foot of the house it has to has have an energy performance standard i guess it looks to me like heard is that standard that the city's adopting is that you know we we're gonna end up with two different systems here or is the seo is that is it your expectation the sedu you and the city will both use heard yeah to clarify heard would be about information uh it is not a building performance standard so the yeah i thought the home energy standard the doe enter h home versus building performance standard would say if you don't score a certain level like you have to hit a certain mark within that system right right right right that's the distinction i imagine that they're i i think you're raising a really good point and we would have to get to that structure figuring out what's the goal within the seo to get to a certain home energy store and where are we making investments right there's a prioritization sort of factor in there so we haven't gotten there so if the energy commission were to support herd are we you know helping the seu or or not or just you know you are helping the community you are not hurting any other path that we might take okay thanks remember breaks thanks um so if i'm understanding correctly uh this is sort of it's kind of at the phase of beginning to pilot this and the hope is that you might be able to move relatively move through that and by next this time next year that we would be looking at um but potentially an ordinance that city council would look at adopting is that right do i get that timeline right yeah and so i'm curious what the time frame is for some of the other communities that have adopted ordinances like this if it's um if the housing market was different because i can imagine that one of the reasons that this isn't particularly uh um a big interest of folks is that they're trying to find any house that they can afford as opposed to you know whatever the energy audit might say so i'm curious how does the the time frame for some of the success and the data that was captured in those other cities like what do you have do you have any sense of what the housing market looked like there i mean austin obviously is a very it's a growing city with affordable you know some of the communities that were mentioned or not affordable communities so just curious yeah that's a great question a lot of the communities um passed theirs at differing times than um what we're seeing now so with in this post-pandemic world the housing market has kind of gone a little haywire so i'm not sure exactly what parallels at this time in this market we could draw between uh what existed when those were passed but um i mean we're talking about the likes of portland that also has a very hot housing market um so i don't think i don't feel like i answered your question there it sounds like it was you know it's varied and there are some things that are comparable here i guess my my concern is a little bit just um the reality of folks that are trying to kind of buy a house in the ann arbor market and it's people are very different sort of um just it really varies but i'm wondering i mean it seems like the real benefit of putting this in ordinance forum is really the educate the information that the city is going to get in terms of how these houses rank and then the ability to potentially approach a whole bunch of homeowners new homeowners at the same time and try to figure out kind of efficiencies of scale in some ways because i can imagine folks are feeling a little house poor at that moment in time um and so i'm curious kind of how how because it is hard you know like that that when you're first in a home to sort of um prioritize making those investments um before you kind of lose that report and that information curious how you're kind of thinking about that yeah um one thing i heard you uh mention about the city collecting data i want to make sure that it's clear that this isn't about the city collecting data the primary goal here is to inform home buyers and we want home buyers to have the information and in fact in the draft furnace there is no [Music] requirement that the city uh that the information be provided to the city the city will verify whether or not that information is um being shared on the uh home listing for instance and um and and will enforce making sure that it is is is there um ultimately when once this is in full implementation um and to that note i also just want to point out that this is one pathway that we've developed um based on some of the best practices that we've learned from rmi and some other existing ordinances that are in place in other cities there that this this timeline is is based on that really strategic stakeholder engagement which is something that we learned from rmi was pretty critical in a lot of other municipalities almost all of the municipalities that we talked to in oregon for instance are uh were had a hard time with with the realtors and it's uh it's they're a well-organized community and rightly so this is where they make their income so you i cannot fully understand i wouldn't want somebody else coming in and disrupting my workflow um if it if my income uh depended on it but um i think that's where the careful education and outreach comes in is because as we do careful um engagement to make sure that they are properly informed on what this is intended to do i think it would um it it could behoove us to do that but i mean yeah no i absolutely i agree they are um they're definitely you know an influential organization the um and you know it makes sense to to engage them early and and often in terms of crafting the program and figuring out what you know what pieces they think would actually be beneficial in terms of um making this of you know seeing this as something of value to the folks that they're trying to sell homes to because if if what they know is that the reality is that this is something that people you know say they want to prioritize they don't really come you know they don't really and they're really do that are there ways that we can craft the program so that it becomes something that then does demonstrate value and i i guess i wonder why i mean i'm definitely on the spectrum of being comfortable with data being shared with government so maybe not everybody is maybe that is not something that everybody welcomes but um i i would think that actually us receiving that information then allows um the city to kind of go out as we have with the solarize program in some ways and be able to then offer cost savings for residents and so that would seem to be a bigger selling point but i'm kind of curious why is it crafted that we wouldn't get that data um well uh i suppose there's no reason we couldn't uh at that in i think at this juncture the the reason it wasn't is because most other municipalities are not requiring that um because the focus is more on homeowner or home buyer information access to information than it is about the anything else but uh i'm i'm happy to explore that yeah i need something to explore i don't know if it's you know it worth asking others i i you know if i may weigh in on in that particular point um so i was also involved in the early efforts behind the ordinance and um we had multiple conversations with portland and a service provider that was helping portland and everything that zach said is correct as far as the primary objective um but portland specifically mentioned that a byproduct if you will or an additional benefit was exactly what you're getting at um this information because it's in appearing in the mls is therefore in the public domain and they were able to look at that data and it's fairly randomized because you're having home sales all over the place so um obviously not initially but over time you're starting to get a pretty good understanding statistically of what are the home energy scores in various neighborhoods and what kinds of things are potentially identified as needs in those neighborhoods so that is indeed a secondary benefit um at one that might then help us further down the road um with the seo and with electrification and other things like that so um at least portland mentioned that i don't recall other cities mentioning it that doesn't mean that that wasn't a benefit elsewhere if i'm in japan i wanted to elevate something that zach said and i want to cushion it in the sense of i can understand that there's likely a lot of frustration that this hasn't kind of moved forward yet and i don't know if folks caught it that zach was talking about this collaboration that he's a part of with other vanguard cities that are doing this work and there was some look forward and a lot of look back on what they wish they would have done and i think that's the recommendation that's being brought forward is taking those lessons and thinking about how to craft this i i recognize we could choose brute force you know and move this forward we're trying to present something though that actually has in perhaps an idealistic sense i want the realtors with us like i want to get to a point where a home energy score comes onto the market and realtors often work with their clients and gift them something at point of sale what if that gift is actually an a20 packet and information or the beginning of an audit or or some sort of improvement like how do we this is information how do we get to change right like how do we create a culture and an ecosystem that fundamentally moves from a home energy score to transformational practices in the home that improve comfort health and safety so i i really want to applaud zach i know this is super super frustrating but he is trying to think about a program and i i just i think that's really that's frustrating that's hard work but thank you zach yeah thanks from others or zach did you want to say something or somebody else i was just going to say thanks to missy for that that phrasing that that's exactly what we're doing um you know i by and large it's in place um if the commission chose to do otherwise we theoretically could um but or no not but and at the same time there's there's information on on how other others have done i i feel optimistic because um the likes of hillsborough oregon for instance and another uh municipality that is escaping me in what might have been minneapolis have some great success stories with uh winning over their local board of realtors and it created a really strong bond they found that their realtors turned into their greatest advocates for the program and now they have a pretty successful and high um compliance rate so um that we're you know we're trying to use the information available to us to to craft this as best we could anyone else if not then um i'm going to speak up and this is probably going to be um of no surprise to zach and missy because i communicated with them over the weekend and posed a number of questions so um i want to go on record at least personally that um i would like to see us move as quickly as possible in implementing the herd program in the ordinance um as was mentioned um this is something that has been roughly three and a half to four years in the works um and we to to use the words of miss appleyard who called in earlier um the area under the emissions over time curve is extremely important and my my belief is that and this goes back i participated in two meetings with um the three members of the executive board of the uh realtors uh so-called the the board of realtors um the issues that are of concern today were the same issues that they had when we spoke with them two years ago they haven't changed um and they won't change in my view um in the next nine months um there is clearly a tension between ramming something down someone's throat and quick asking but my my concern is that we with climate action are going to be confronted with this in nearly everything that we do and maybe this is not a good analogy but we're going to have a climate uh millage on the ballot and if 60 or 51 approve the millage then there's going to be a lot of other people that aren't happy about it and that's going to be true with just about anything that we do there's going to be individuals and constituencies that fight this but i think we have to be driven by the crisis um it was declared an emergency by council but i think a lot of people would say that we're in a climate crisis and therefore um you know our job is to advise council my belief is that we should move forward as quickly as possible and that will be something that council determines in talking with staff and maybe inside conversations with members of the commission but i feel very strongly that there is a while there's benefits to waiting there is a significant opportunity cost roughly a thousand twelve hundred homes are sold in ann arbor as homes and condominiums every year so we're losing that number of data points um every year and uh you know i'm going to just bring up one other point when this was first posted on the presentation was dated in september and now we're in february and um you know we're losing time so every single one of the actions that we take i think it's really important that commission and staff and council think what are the trade-offs what are the opportunity costs what are the benefits and i'll just finish by saying one more time let's move quickly commissioner over back yeah i think i have to just weigh in briefly i totally agree with john you know if we have a decarbonisate you know a net zero by 2030 which i believe council you know has spoken on right um that's going to be impossible unless we do everything we can to move it ahead fast um you know we don't have any time to waste so i think we just have to give this a shot and if we get resistance we have to listen to that resistance and work out a an alternate solution but the sooner we push it through or recommend it the sooner we hopefully will have this kind of ordinance it makes total sense we're just not i mean if to decarbonize all the homes and buildings in ann arbor we have to do this um so that's my two cents thanks commissioner just a comment another question um you were talking about the uh talking with the real estate association and their position hasn't changed nothing's changed in two years um when i was the we took this to the state legislature in 2008 when i was managing the better business buildings program for the state and and have the same conversations and you know it hasn't changed in lansing either since then so i couldn't agree with you more that um you know all pollution is local so we better deal with this now so um so my question is this john if we can we put i know that we have a lag of a month so if we get a resolution you know put on the books today then we vote on it at the next meeting um do you have ver words verbiage you'd like to use it to propose for a resolution and if you do i'll be happy to say so moved and get this thing moving um if you got verbiage let's get it going otherwise i'll just say i you know propose we craft a resolution and somebody can second it but whatever whatever your privilege i think we should do it as oh well to answer that off the cuff because the idea i hadn't thought of before until um it came up uh tonight um i don't know that frankly we have to do a resolution um it's a formality i think one option we could do is have a show of hands um who who thinks we should move forward as quickly as possible um and the other is that um we basically follow the timeline and um simply osi and council would take that into advisement that's all we can do anyhow so i don't know that we need to craft a bunch of whereas statements and have a first reading and a second reading and everything else there may be benefit in that and i will yield the floor to council member briggs she had her hand up before that but she may want to comment on that yeah thanks sounds like piano practice or piano banging has begun in my side room um but i understand the desire to move quickly on this i understand the frustration of seeing something that's been sitting that feels like it's been sitting for a long period of time and seeing the resistance that happened a couple of years ago and feeling like it's still there i will say from my vantage point it is a heck of a lot easier to to move an ordinance forward and get support for it at the council table if in addition to the voices of folks that are opposing it there are voices of folks that support it and so this pilot program that's moving forward is building support from the real from folks that work as realtors and so and can speak to the success of it or um speak to the benefits of it and so i would prefer to at least see i mean as quickly as we can move forward i would think means helping to learn how this can work and be supported in our community and and be successful and honestly get just getting that getting the scores isn't enough we have to have people who are doing something with those scores right and so we want them to we want the realtors to be excited about it and talking about it in a positive way and there's taking a little bit of time to get that part right can build success for the program in the long term and so you know if we can't get there um after our pilot program then maybe we abandoned that idea but i would at least since staff seems to be working on this um i'd like to give them that opportunity to to build some support and to build some ideas for how we roll this out in the most successful way that's possible in our community any other comments so i'll weigh in again um you know that that overlaps with osi's position um i still feel strongly that we're going to with this pilot be working with realtors that are already inclined to support this um and certainly it will help to have voices in the realtor community that are supportive of this i just think that um what we're going to be confronted with every step of the way going back to commissioner overpeck's uh statement is every time that we do something with climate because because there is no social cost of of of of carbon in any of the calculations there are going to be people that are going to be um lined up against what we're doing so i think we just have to be cognizant of speed and one of the uh things that we talked about when we talked about these renewable energy criteria and principles is the principle of speed and i think we have to to really members remember that and there's going to be resistance um against this and there will clearly be in this case um but i think at least i'm belaboring the point you know where i stand i encourage others to speak up before we leave this topic and move on to the next one any other so commissioner levine sorry uh yeah i mean i'm kind of torn on this topic it does seem like something we talked about maybe three four years ago so it does seem like the idea has been around for a long time um on the other hand i do like the idea of getting more support behind it because the realtors are the ones that are ultimately going to be very involved in the program um my concern with the pilot and i don't fully know if there's a great way to fix this is that the benefit of this program as i see it is you can compare multiple properties that you're looking at whereas in a pilot i don't know how many people are going to be involved so a homeowner comes along and wants to look at some houses they're not going to have a lot of choices of ones that have these scores so i guess that's that's my biggest concern i guess is how are we gonna make a pilot that is gonna be be uh effective in showing how well this is going to work mr cover yes um i i fully support the concept and moving quickly but i also have to step back a bit because there are a lot of things that are on the plate all of which will need some attention and some support within the community i don't think you can assume that that support within the community is unbounded i think there is a limit and so because of that i think you really need to prioritize all the top things that you need to accomplish to get to the 20 30 goal i'm concerned that if i had to prioritize this this would not be in my top five but i'm just wondering what other people think i'm concerned that the population of the city does not have an unlimited amount of interest in doing all the things that we are lining up thank you any other comments before we leave the topic commissioner colin garcia thank you john i'm curious about the the pilot and how much of it has been designed so far if you could elaborate on that that'd be great zach certainly that's a great question um so the pilot right now is still program development um but some of the preliminary conversations that we've had with interested realtors would be getting dedication from the realtors who um would commit to all of their homes that they sell complying with what would be the the herd ordinance um and then using leveraging some of the collaborations that we've built with say walker miller who we've already begun discussion with who's putting together a format for how they could meet the demand for a pilot and or for an expanded full-fledged program [Music] to who could offer free home energy assessments and um the pilot i ideally would be free so that it would um show just how simple the process can be and just kind of remove any mental barriers for a lot of the realtors and and home buyers and just and show that it's really just a house visit um prior to the sale and the idea then is that once we have done that a number of times with through the pilot it will give us an opportunity to talk through any hiccups that the realtors have experienced during that time and make adjustments as necessary but also to just show how simple it is and once we have some realtors who uh have gone through the process and understand truly how easy and straightforward it is that that their word among their peers would be um i think that would be a strong leveraging tool how far before the sale is this um what's like what is the window of time prior to the sale is there like a limit of time um that's a really good question and where uh the legality or the likelihood of lawsuits gets gets really tricky of course we would want it as close to time of listing as possible um the through some assessments that uh that we've done with uh some legal review it appears that the closer we get to a time of sale i'm sorry a time of marketing requirement the higher the likelihood is that there will be some legal pushback uh from the community um and so the the goal is to balance that to find a timeline um that would reduce the the amount of legal um pushback with the um efficacy of having it at time of listing that's that's really the most effective time to have it available um but as we've seen it with some other um policies and legislation in the state of michigan our our current legislature tends to put a ban on things that they don't like outright and so we don't want to the reason we want to avoid any sort of legal intervention is because it could turn this whole thing on its head and we might not be able to enforce it at all which isn't a position any of us want to be in um so there isn't a firm timeline yet um but as the the program developed uh fleshes out we would we would work with different timelines and that's the idea of using a pilot is to to to find that process flow and what works easiest for realtors and home buyers during the process do you have a range of number of participating buildings that you would like to include as far as a successful pilot um in my last conversation with walker miller um we we decided that we would try to secure home energy assessments for a hundred buildings which would get us through a couple of months perhaps of of home sales um uh particularly especially if not all realtors are are participating that would get us through more time than that but we don't intend to extend the pilot program much longer than that we don't want the pilot to take a long time are you targeting brokers or are you targeting targeting individual realtors um a little bit above um and there's more to come on that yet but the conversations that we've had right now are um with individual realtors who are looking to champion it at their um at their brokerage among their agency um and there is i mean just before this meeting i got information from one of those realtors about others who he would like to recruit to help participate in this pilot so there's there's some certainly some growing interest in um unfolding and unfolding unleashing a unveiling a pilot program um and [Music] again again it's all it's happening as we speak um uh piecing that together so um i guess we're talking about it for you right now sorry go ahead no i'm just you know i'm listening to everything that you've been saying so far and then this additional detail that you're providing us and i'm listening for perhaps opportunities to compress the timeline in some way uh to you know minimize the you know the cost of of not having something like this in place for the city but thank you so much for providing this information really appreciate it it helps me understand better um in just a quick note of clarification for my benefit yeah you mentioned compress the timeline there were a couple of different timelines that i mentioned i want to make sure that you're talking about the timeline to implementation of a full-fledged program right okay thank you thank you um i i guess i think in your uh slide sack you highlighted as one of the primary concerns it seems like the realtors not being able to translate what they perceive as interest into commitment and follow-through is that kind of a correct way to describe it yeah um it it's it's i think even more than a simple perception of interest um realtors the realtors who i've talked to will say that many of their um the home buyers their clients that they work with will say i'm interested in this if they're asked generally speaking many of the realtors say that this isn't something that's brought up by home buyers i i think there's maybe a chicken and an egg situation going on here is it not being brought up because it's not part of the home buying process yet or is it not part of the home buying product you know what i'm saying um that that perhaps um if once heard is in place it become it introduces that as a talking point among these conversations but that the interest wanes once they start getting down to the details of buying a house um yeah i guess i'd love to understand it maybe not at this time but um in the future what are some of those details that might um you know cause them to wane if it's cost or if it's another factor but i guess my other um thought as you're going through the pilot is um are i imagine that the primary goal is really more about the homeowner the home buyer and the benefits that they can just receive related to efficiency um is the pilot gonna be able to kind of quantify or translate that into you know be able to collect and give examples of how much uh home buyers might be saving or or other ways that we can kind of really make this a little bit more of an appealing and clear connection for folks i mean is that something that's already covered um yeah in terms of the cost to the homeowner uh cost savings for energy efficiency um a lot of that information is would be included in a home energy score so once that's attained by an assessor they have information um on where to leverage their dollars and what would give them the quickest payback and roughly how much those would cost ideally some specifics of the report are regulated by the doe so it has to include certain information there are some participating assessors who will go above and beyond and include some additional information in there and sometimes that includes certain costs but sometimes that's it varies based on location in the country thank you yeah that's helpful i'm just just trying to think through like if there's like a testimonial or something because it seems like that there might just be a a disconnect between like you know the payoff and the benefits the system could provide but thank you so much for that certainly thanks for your questions yeah i just wanted to comment i mean something you said zach made me think about how i i feel like it's very normal when looking for apartments to ask like the landlord or current tenants what the um current like utility bills are and that to me feels something that's like very normalized in in a renting search process um and so like i i do think you know you had said like oh it's hard to know if this is a chicken or the egg problem and people don't know to ask if people would be interested once it becomes normalized i think that is true um so i think for me that's something like i would be interested in because that's something i'm used to asking now when i'm seeking um housing and so i think it is something that maybe once it's normalized it'll become normal it will become more common and something interested and i wonder if part of the framing for people could be like i know you know when people are looking at purchasing homes you get like oh this would be approximately your monthly payment right that includes your mortgage your interest and your taxes right like you know this is about how much it would cost if the framing could be like okay add you know based on this home energy audit score like add to your monthly payment for this home right um and so then i would be thinking about oh my place will cost twelve hundred dollars a month instead of one thousand dollars a month compared to this home right and if it's framed and how it will impact your monthly payment if that would help convince people commissioner cleavy you're muted mark god um we have a patent guild neighborhood association that i'm a part of one of actually one of the founders and stuff and we've been looking at this issue as part of our solarize patent gout project looking at the issue of um you know high performing homes basically homes that have a high energy score um and solar and those that have high energy scores what what difference that makes um and in terms of real estate and you know to the extent that the the association and the neighborhood can position itself as a as a preferred place for a real estate um uh things like that anyway um this led me to hook up with the national realtors association and they in 2021 they published a report this is the national social education of realtors they um published a report called realtors and sustainability report i urge people to take a look at that um there's three i three really important i think findings from that report that might lend themselves to this discussion um first is they quote found that most real estate agents unfortunately don't realize that high performing features actually increase a home's value second of all agents aren't able to recognize high-performing homes and subsequently value it improperly and third most most sellers don't know that high performing features such as home insulation and air sealing are what produces lower cost comfort and warmth in their homes so you know i think that this i appreciate the fact that we're gonna we're gonna go out and try and educate the realtors here we're gonna do a pilot program and all that stuff but ultimately um we we have to get this done so i think you know let's let's uh uh communicate to the city council that we strongly endorse the office of sustainability innovations work in this area and that it is our strong opinion that the city commission city council should um expedite this process as soon as possible and get us to an ordinance um and do what's necessary to get that done and and otherwise we're going to sit here and say oh well we'll just business as usual and sit back and not do anything i appreciate we'd like to have a in some more data but honestly folks there's a ton of data out there including the national real estate association we don't need more data we don't need more stuff we need to push the envelope and if you know the energy commission's uh stating this in public that we think you know energy efficient homes are a good thing you know um well let's do it let's get out there and let's do it so john i support the thing i if you were to put that forward i would certainly vote yes that this should be communicated in whatever form makes sense to the city commission as quickly as possible [Music] um in the interest of time we have one other subject to take up that i'm going to try to deal with quickly um and but i think maybe um it's worth moving on um i don't know that a vote is gonna change a whole lot so i don't think i'm gonna bother to do that i'll just reiterate my point using language of paraphrasing um michael mann and in effect also saul griffith i mean we have arrows in our quiver and we need to be using those arrows this one has been in our air in our quiver for a year and my sense is is that instead of a pilot maybe another thing that we should think about is really deep education and engagement with the realtors because i don't think the pilot's going to tell us a whole lot more but that's just my personal opinion and i leave it to council member briggs and uh missy and others to um hammer this out and to see what we can do i think we we know what what the thoughts are of everybody and now the is how do we move forward as efficiently as possible possible taking into account also things like what commissioner kerber mentioned so um if no one has any objections i'm going to close this topic and move on to the next one which is a resolution that was referred by city council to four commissions if i'm not mistaken and councilmember riggs correct me if i'm wrong it's energy environment transportation and planning so this is a resolution that was penned by council member griswold and co-sponsored by council member haner and um council deferred action uh and asked that uh the four commissions that i mentioned weigh in on this and so um what i thought we would do tonight and not have a long debate on this is at least in a sense read this into the record um and so everybody can have a chance to look at it maybe have a brief discussion of it i sent out a version with um some comments that i had and so um what i would ask missy maybe is to put the original version up and if we can get a vote um or a motion to consider the resolution in a second then we can open it up for discussion and possibly move quickly to my friendly amendments have some quick discussion and then uh potentially vote on it and finalize this at our next meeting but i'm of course open to everybody else's input on the matter council member breaks i realized i probably should open it up for just get into the discussion and then i can say something so for those who haven't read it um basically the resolution name effectively describes um what's um being asked is that it's asking the city to basically engage with the university of michigan and encourage the university of michigan to look into constructing developing 2000 units of workforce housing specifically in this case on north campus and also doing some other things in terms of agreeing on as student population increases together with employment population that there we are moving to the resolve clauses um if there be some kind of formula that the university in the city would try to reach some kind of understanding on that the university would implement so here are the resolved clauses and i'm not going to read these what i'd like first is council member briggs to comment and then i'm going to ask for someone to make a motion with a possible second if people feel comfortable and then open it up go ahead council member breaks yeah so um it's pretty unusual for us to have a commit a resolution that comes to council and then get referred to for four different commissions for feedback so i just kind of want to note that um and it wasn't really necessarily specified at the commission table um what's feedback would be helpful for the sponsors in terms of thinking about how to move this forward there was some some general discussion at the council table about um about some of the you know some of the pieces around this resolved claw some of those elements that are in this kind of our ability to you know how are we coming up with the specific number you know um and some different elements and some of the different pieces that we're asking within the resolve clause but i i guess um you know it's in terms of thinking about the basic premise here is that we're facing an affordable affordability crisis um housing crisis in the city of ann arbor um and we are trying to figure out what we can do on the city's end to um change our housing policies to expedite housing in our community and this is a thought of um you know this is from the from the sponsors this is an idea that you know our partner university of michigan might consider thinking about housing outside of student housing um thinking about workforce housing and how that might play into their um into their goals currently it's important to know that university of michigan doesn't you know like many universities doesn't have this as as part of their um kind of set of goals that they would provide help workforce housing um i think probably there are some some limitations obviously from a private perspective about how we might be able the energy efficiency and what we can require out of that obviously the university has the ability to to really um do a lot more if they were to build housing and to build workforce housing and so um it may be helpful i mean to to go away from this discussion and think about it for a month or something like that and provide some notes and and that even just sending those in to the sponsors of this might be helpful but maybe there's some very specific thoughts that can come out of this as as general feedback from the energy commission as well as to um on this on this matter so that's my basic overview this is not my resolution that i bought for thank you um what i would like to do before we get um additional comments um commissioner peck um is get a motion to at least consider this and possibly a second um if there is no um intention to doing that then of course um we would drop the matter but um can can we get a motion in a second or okay we'll consider it okay okay from commissioner peck and a second from commissioner calvin garcia and i think i saw another hand um so we'll open up for discussion and i'll start with you commissioner overpay yeah um it's funny i would be interested in in knowing why council's being a little tentative here i can imagine that there's a long tradition of uh sort of town and gown difficulty i'm not sure um but i think this could fly uh i think it needs to be strengthened and at least let's consider we shouldn't be building more housing unless it's net um and the university shouldn't be building anything unless it's net zero so um and they know that and they're committed to that already in their carbon neutrality plan they being us so i think we could add that and you could add it in a nice way um i mean it's just this whole thing is just like uh aspirational um but i do think uh the university of michigan is considering some some very visionary changes on our north campus including trying to create some communities of the future and it makes total sense uh in our carbon neutrality plan as well to consider workforce housing um and to re for the same reasons you you know that you have in this resolution which is to reduce the commuting i i think the university is also um thinking of ways uh and what i'm pushing for anyhow is to be more integrated with ann arbor and this is a great way to do that um because it's not just the students it's like you said it's the workforce but it would be students and workforce together um hopefully faculty included were part of the workforce um and i you know i think this will be an easier thing for the university of michigan to uh consider and to embrace than than anyone might be thinking that said uh there's a new president being hired now and just announced today is that process to to try and hire that new pros uh president by summer i think it'd be really smart to have this thing done and already communicated at university of michigan before this summer so that the new president would have would be thinking about this when she or he uh was thinking about whether to come to michigan you know all of us have to really be a little worried that the new president might not be as embracing of carbon neutrality as the previous president was he was very embracing um and we really want to make sure that whoever we hire you know hire for the new president given the size of an uh university of michigan and the importance to ann arbor in terms of everything square footage and carbon neutrality um that that person is up for what we're asking thank you thanks for those insights um other comments missy would you mind showing the version that i sent to everyone and um i won't belabor each and every point um but i'd like to at least call out a couple of points while you're doing that um so these are some suggested changes that i made and i think uh commissioner peck um made a couple of other good suggestions that we would want to consider when we then vote on this i would like to point out that both the a20 plan and the pccn's recommendations called for additional housing to be built in ann arbor in the case of uofm on its periphery which would then apply to north campus so if you can scroll down so there's a few um updated um statistics um in here and i've um footnoted those so you might want to take a look at those um so um some of these are are correct but some of these were a little bit understated so you can see employment is up over 6 000 jobs um i tried to get a in the next clause where it talks about 118 private companies have been launched um 31 in fiscal year 20.